Introduction The act of caring in nursing requires previous deliberation and decision, however this perception only arises when an ethical problem emerges. Objective: Identify ethical problems of nurses action in the area of beginning of human life Method: Exploratory and descriptive method, with a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data, who were submitted to content analysis. The sample was constituted by 26 nurses. Results 18 categories of problem areas and 56 ethical problems in early human life were (...) identified. The results obtained are very diverse, including areas such as termination of pregnancy, informed consent or maintaining privacy. However, other problem areas also emerge and numerous new subcategories/ethical problems, including: dealing with miscarriage, extreme situations, minors’ pregnancy, serious malformations detected at birth, consent regarding care during childbirth, Non- identification of a ethical problem, nurse social recognition and non-involvement of the person in labour. Conclusion Nurses face different ethical problems that impact their lives. We intend to contribute in helping to make decisions in this field, which the outset is of hope and joy, but which hides, behind this evidence, countless situations of suffering for everyone involved. The identification of ethical problems in this field, it is the first step to reflect about theme and helping decision-making for nurses that are taking care in this area of beginning of human life, when confronted whit the same type of ethical problems. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article assesses the proliferation of international accountability standards (IAS) in the recent past. We provide a comprehensive overview about the different types of standards and discuss their role as part of a new institutional infrastructure for corporate responsibility. Based on this, it is argued that IAS can advance corporate responsibility on a global level because they contribute to the closure of some omnipresent governance gaps. IAS also improve the preparedness of an organization to give an explanation and a justification (...) to relevant stakeholders for its judgments, intentions, acts and omissions when appropriately called upon to do so. However, IAS also face a variety of problems impeding their potential to help address social and environmental issues. The contribution of the four articles in this special section is discussed in the context of standards’ problems and opportunities. The article closes by outlining a research agenda to further develop and extend the scholarly debate around IAS. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between CEO incentives and strong and weak corporate social performance. Using the KLD database we find that incentives have no significant relationship with strong social performance. Salary and long-term incentives have a positive association with weak social performance.

Thomas Hobbes has been hailed as the philosopher of power par excellence; however, I demonstrate that Hobbes’s conceptualization of political power is not stable across his texts. Once the distinction is made between the authorized and the effective power of the sovereign, it is no longer sufficient simply to defend a doctrine of the authorized power of the sovereign; such a doctrine must be robustly complemented by an account of how the effective power commensurate to this authority might be achieved. (...) Nor is this straightforward: for effective political power can fluctuate, sometimes severely. In this light, the prevalent juridical reading of Hobbes’s political philosophy is inadequate. (shrink)

This essay is a critical review of Sandra Harding's The Science Question in Feminism. Her text constitutes a monumental effort to capture an overview of recent feminist critique of science and to develop a feminist dialectical and materialist conception of the history of masculinist science. In this analysis of Harding's work, the organizing categories as well as the main assumptions of the text are reconstructed for closer examination within the context of modern feminist critique of science and feminist theory (...) in general. Although a postive review of Harding's text is presented, questions are raised concerning the adequacy of socialist feminist assumptions for such a project, the limitations of Harding's theorization of gender, and the appropriateness of "postmodernism" as a final category of residence. (shrink)

People who teach business ethics seem locked between two general approaches: an applied philosophy approach that emphasizes the application of abstract ethical theories and principles to specific cases, and the case method approach that leaves the students without any more general theoretical framework with which to approach ethical issues. Classical American Pragmatism, understood as a school of philosophical thought, links these two approaches by providing a new grounding for moral theory in which moral rules are understood as working hypotheses abstracted (...) from concrete situations and moralreasoning demands the return to concrete situations as the foundation for moral decision making that is inherently contextual. Thus moral decision making is bottom up rather than top down, and a sense of moral rightness comes not from the indoctrination of abstract principles but from attunement to the way in which moral beliefs and practices must be rooted naturally in the very conditions of human existence. (shrink)

Negri celebrates a conception of democracy in which the concrete powers of individual humans are not alienated away, but rather are added together: this is a democracy of the multitude. But how can the multitude act without alienating anyone’s power? To answer this difficulty, Negri explicitly appeals to Spinoza. Nonetheless, in this paper, I argue that Spinoza’s philosophy does not support Negri’s project. I argue that the Spinozist multitude avoids internal hierarchy through the mediation of political institutions and not in (...) spite of them; nor do these institutions merely emanate from the multitude as it is, but rather they structure, restrain and channel its passions. In particular, the required institutions are not those of a simple direct democracy. There may be other non-Spinozist arguments on which Negri can ground his theory, but he cannot legitimately defend his conception of the democratic multitude by appeal to Spinoza. (shrink)

The current literature in business ethics is tending toward an unacknowledged moral pluralism, with all the problems this position entails. An adequate moral pluralism cannot be achieved by a synthesis of existing theoretical alternatives for moral action. Rather, what is needed is a radical reconstruction of the understanding of the moral situation that undercuts some of the traditional dichotomies, provides a solid philosophical grounding which is inherently pluralistic, and offers a new understanding of what it is to think morally. The (...) philosophical position of American pragmatism, as briefly sketched in this paper, offers one such possible reconstruction. (shrink)

Schopenhauer singles out Kant's theory of the sublime for high praise, calling it ‘by far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement’, yet, in his main discussion of the sublime, he ridicules Kant's explanation as being in the grip of scholastic metaphysics. My first aim in this paper is to sort out Schopenhauer's apparently conflicted appraisal of Kant's theory of the sublime. Next, based on hisNachlaß,close readings of published texts and especially of his account of the experience (...) of tragic drama, I offer a reconstruction of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime which understands it – against prevailing scholarly views – as atransformation ofrather than as a realdeparture fromthe Kantian explanation. Finally, I suggest that my interpretation of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime has far-reaching consequences for a proper understanding of his views on freedom. (shrink)

Since the mid‐1990s we have witnessed the rise of numerous constructive and positive activities aimed at developing or enhancing corporate responsibility and corporate citizenship as well as anti‐globalization and anticorporate activism. And, of course, in 2008, we witnessed the meltdown of financial markets and numerous financial institutions as well as some major companies teetering on the brink of collapse. What is actually needed to create the world that many people want to live in may in fact be a new relationship (...) between business and society, that is, new ways of looking at the corporation and its role in society, both in practice and in management education? We will argue that some initiatives, such as Corporation 2020, have already begun to explore these issues by taking a more holistic perspective on different purposes and roles of the corporation in the future. Management education, which has been severely criticized in the aftermath of the economic crisis, has an important role to play, but in a changed form. Implications for leadership and management education include the need to shift cognitive, moral, and emotional levels of development, renewed emphasis on balance both individually and socially, a less is more sensibility, a holistic systems perspective, and shifting the purpose of the firm to encompass not just shareholder needs, but also societal, stakeholder, and ecological needs and interests. In this article we explore some of the ways in which these attributes might be engendered in future leaders, at least in those management development and education programs interested in fostering a new wave of progressive leadership in management for the future. (shrink)

This essay focuses on Schopenhauer’s aesthetics and philosophy of art, areas of his philosophy which have attracted the most philosophical attention in recent years. After discussing the subjective and objective aspects of aesthetic experience on his account, I shall offer interpretations of Schopenhauer’s theory of the sublime and solution to the problem of tragedy. In addition, I shall touch upon the liveliest interpretive debates concerning his aesthetic theory: the intelligibility of the “Platonic Ideas” as the objects of aesthetic experience and (...) the very possibility of aesthetic experience within Schopenhauer’s system. Another aim of this essay is to suggest how some of Schopenhauer’s aesthetic doctrines may be interpreted in a less metaphysically extravagant way. When understood in this manner, contemporary aestheticians might be inclined to take a closer look at Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory and philosophy of art, for it is distinctive in the tradition of Western philosophical aesthetics in its attempt to highlight and balance the hedonic and cognitive importance of aesthetic experiences; in its sensitivity both to the aesthetic experience of nature as well as of art; in the high value placed on the experience of music ; and in the innovative solution to the problem of tragedy it offers. (shrink)

Digital communication now pervades all spheres of life, creating new possibilities for commodification: personal data and communication are the new resources of surplus value. This in turn brings about a totally new category of threats to privacy. With recourse to the culture industry critique of early critical theory, this article seeks to challenge basic theoretical assumptions held within a liberal account of privacy. It draws the attention to the entanglement of technical and socio-economic transformations and aims at elaborating an alternative (...) framing which takes into account that privacy is not in the first place a pre-political space for individual freedom but a constituted sphere in which social power relations are reproduced in a particularly deceitful way. With recourse to positions of critical theory, this article revisits the conceptual ambiguity of liberation and oppression and looks to draft prospects for a socio-theoretical justification and critique of privacy, updated for the digital age. Following the tradition of critical theory, the argument focuses on (new) forms of domination in and by privacy. It aims to prepare the ground for a critique of the social’s increasing commodification as well as an idea of privacy understood as reflexive participation in social practices. (shrink)

In order to highlight the intimate relationship between imagining, drawing and making worlds, this essay questions the educational meaning of children to initiate in the action of drawing in face of the growing cultural tendency of the body being less and less required to produce senses. The incarnated action of drawing, as an aesthetic action of touching and being touched by the world when transposing the visible limits and entering into the intimacy of worldly invisibility, constitutes an experience that is (...) as recurrent and trivialized in school daily life as it is existentially complex due to its poetic power to enter the invisible and inaugurate worldviews. The historical disqualification of the image and imagination in Western thought, supported by the separation between subjectivity of the body and objectivity of the world, does not allow educational thought to consider the phenomenon of poetic imagination as an existential experience of language insertion in the world from the gesture of drawing. Gesture that finds its specificity in the instant the hand traces and inscribes lines on the surface of the supports as infinitely creative writing. The aesthetic gesture of drawing, temporalized by the rhythm of the body in the emergence of the fabulation that accompanies the repetition of the marks, implies a poetic experience of language that involves the fusion of two senses: that of the gesture in materiality and that of the mark configured in it, marked and cicatrized in the surface of the support by the body’s action that performed it. The approximation between education, arts and childhood allows us to highlight the philosophical and pedagogical tensions that involve the question of poetic imagination and to take another look at the action of drawing in the context of children's education. What emerges, from the dialogue between Gaston Bachelard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Nancy, is the relevance of the educational intention of caring for the vital function of language as an aesthetic and poetic experience that is constituted in the processuality of the body to make something appear that produces and contains presence, that which promotes and expands the existential density of the real. (shrink)

Jusqu'à maintenant, il semble qu'on n'ait pas établi de lien entre le rejet par Bolzano de la notation quantificationnelle des propositions universelles de la logique traditionnelle et l'articulation inédite de sa notion de validité universelle. C'est ce que je veux faire ici. En particulier, dans la mesure où l'analyticité est un cas spécial de la validité universelle, j'ai l'intention de défendre l'idée qui veut que la notion bolzanienne d'analyticité cherche à résoudre des problèmes qui sont intrinsèquement liés à la théorie (...) traditionnelle de la quantification universelle tels qu'ils surviennent, notamment avec le traitement kantien de l'analyticité. It seems that the connection between Bolzano's rejection of the traditional quantificational notation for universal propositions and the articulation of his notion of universal validity has remained, until today, perfectly unnoticed. In this paper, I will show that there is such a connection. Particularly, since analyticity is a special case of universal validity, my intention is to show that the problems to which Bolzano's perfectly original account of analyticity seeks to find an answer are intrinsically related to the traditional conception of universal quantification as it arises in the context of Kant's treatment of analyticity. (shrink)

While discovery of error provides personal gain for the entrepreneur, does this process automatically allocate value equitably among all stakeholders? We argue that the entrepreneurial process can be used to generate or maintain an entrepreneur’s personal wealth through the exploitation of a stakeholder group. Thus entrepreneurship can be both an equilibrating and a disequilibrating process and that both the visible hand of government and the decisions of an entrepreneur can speed or slow our movement toward value equilibrium. Speed toward value (...) equilibrium is likely to be important to a victimized stakeholder group and deserves further scholarly attention. (shrink)

Archaeological theory -- Philosophy and archaeology -- Critical realism as critique of Western philosophy -- Critical realism as philosophical underlabourer -- Diversity and impasse in current archaeological theorising -- The contradictions of archaeological theory -- The material in archaeological theory -- Critical realism, the material, and absence -- Time, scale, and the ontology of the material -- Conclusions, implications, and further research.

Robust ex vivo expansion of umbilical cord blood (UCB) derived hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) should enable the widespread use of UCB as a source of cells to treat hematologic and immune diseases. Novel approaches for HSPC expansion have recently been developed, setting the stage for the production of blood stem cell derived products that fulfill our current best known criteria of clinical relevance. Translating these technologies into clinical use requires bioengineering strategies to overcome challenges of scale‐up, reproducibility, and (...) product quality assurance. Clinical‐scale implementation should also define criteria and targets for cost‐effective cell manufacturing. As production strategies become more effective, new opportunities in the therapeutic use of ex vivo expanded hematopoietic cell products will emerge. Herein we examine key technological milestones that need to be met in order to move ex vivo expanded HSPC therapies from the bench‐top to the bedside in a robust and reliable manner. (shrink)

This paper is based on a case study involving construction of a new petrochemical plant near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the controversy surrounding its location. The paper will explore ethical issues raised by this plant, utilizing a pragmatic perspective that differs from traditional ethical frameworks. In developing and exploring the implications of this case, the complexities of its moral dimensions will be discussed, as well as the way the insights of classical American pragmatism provide a useful orientation for trying to (...) come to grips with these complexities. (shrink)

This book offers new perspectives on the history of analytical philosophy, surveying recent scholarship on the philosophical study of mind, language, logic and reality over the course of the last 200 years. Each chapter contributes to a broader engagement with a wider range of figures, topics and disciplines outside of philosophy than has been traditionally associated with the history of analytical philosophy. The book acquaints readers with new aspects of analytical philosophy’s revolutionary past while engaging in a much needed methodological (...) reflection. It questions the meaning associated with talk of 'analytic' philosophy and offers new perspective on its development. It offers original studies on a range of topics – including in the philosophy of language and mind, logic, metaphysics and the philosophy of mathematics – and figures whose relevance, when they is not already established as in the case of Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, are just now beginning to become the topic of mainstream literature: Franz Brentano, William James, Susan Langer as well as the German and British logicians of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

O cerne desta obra se ancora em reflexões acerca da proliferação de novas doenças vinculadas a condutas cotidianas. Tal situação está diretamente relacionada à participação da indústria farmacêutica na produção de novos fármacos para doenças antes impensadas, revelando problemas éticos e políticos relevantes para a Saúde Coletiva. O tema central, Medicalização da Vida, é ainda desdobrado em discussões éticas sobre a relação pesquisa e indústria farmacêutica; políticas públicas de saúde e educação; desafios dos Comitês de Ética em Pesquisa e, por (...) fim, nos desafios éticos para a consolidação do Sistema Único de Saúde. O livro reúne uma coletânea de textos que apresentam pluralidade de perspectivas teóricas referentes a essa problemática, tendo como eixo norteador o olhar ético sobre problemas cotidianos, o qual enriquece o debate e permite ampliar a compreensão desta temática absolutamente atual. (shrink)

Los desafíos de la Ética Ambiental en un mundo superpoblado, no buscan abogar forzosamente por un mayor control restrictivo de la natalidad, sino más bien por un autocontrol consciente del actual daño holístico. Se torna sustancial sondear la precaución que se ha de tener relativa al equilibrio en la adecuación entre el aumento de individuos que se podría conservar indefinidamente en el medio ambiente, de aquel que generaría un daño mayor. El que esta última tendencia autodestructiva haya llevado a la (...) humanidad a seguir un camino muy similar al recorrido por otras especies antes de su correspondiente colapso, lleva a pensar que como especie no hemos sido capaz de dimensionar la incidencia del especieísmo en el desarrollo interno de la creciente demográfica humana, ni menos aún de comprender la lección que nos dejaron otros seres vivos que se reprodujeron más allá de lo que el ecosistema pudo asimilar, generando las secuelas devastadoras que hoy se pueden conocer y lamentar. (shrink)

Resenha do livro de Willi Bolle. grandesertáo.br . Sáo Paulo: Duas Cidades/Editora 34, 2004, 478 páginas. [Coleçáo Espírito Crítico].

Attribution theory is used as a conceptual framework for examining how causal beliefs about peer harassment influence how victims think and feel about themselves. Evidence is presented that victims who make characterological self-blaming attributions are particularly at risk of negative self-views. Also examined is the influence of social context, particularly the ethnic composition of schools and classrooms. It was found that students who were both victims of harassment and members of the majority ethnic group were more vulnerable to self-blaming attributions. (...) In contrast, greater ethnic diversity, that is, classrooms where no one group was in the majority, tended to ward off self-blaming tendencies. Studies of peer harassment are a good context for examining one of the main themes of the special issue, which is how the social context influences the way individuals think and feel about themselves. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Annual Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies:San Francisco, California, USA, 19-22 November 2011Sandra Costen Kunz, SBCS SecretaryThe SBCS is one of thirty-two scholarly societies formally recognized by the American Academy of Religion as "Related Scholarly Organizations." The pattern for many years has been for the SBCS to hold its annual meeting in conjunction with the annual meeting of the AAR. On the Friday before the AAR's annual (...) meeting begins, the board meets in the morning and early afternoon, followed by an AAR-advertised session late that afternoon and then a field trip that evening. On Saturday, another paper session or panel is followed by the Society's annual members' meeting.Friday afternoon's 4:00-6:30 session, titled "Constructing Buddhist Identities in the West," was standing room only. The four papers presented at that panel are included in this volume.On Saturday morning, then SBCS president Miriam Levering presided at a well-attended session from 9:00 to 11:30. The topic was "Christian Readings of Buddhist Texts." Catherine Cornille (Boston College), editor of the Christian Commentaries on Non-Christian Sacred Texts series, gave the first presentation, titled "Reading the Religious Other." She discussed the origin and nature of the series and gave examples of the methodologies used in various volumes they had published. Francis X. Clooney (Harvard University) presented "Reading Inter-religiously as a Theologically Necessary Act." Insisting that "reading well has a lot of common factors whether or not a text is from one's own or another tradition," he noted that "saying you read both the same doesn't mean you put them on same doctrinal level.... We defer the apologetics not just to be polite, but because there are many other things to do first." Leo Lefebure (Georgetown University) spoke about "Reading the Dhammapada" in light of his work with Peter Feldmeier in writing The Path of Wisdom: A Christian Commentary on the Dhammapada, published within the Christian Commentaries on Non-Christian Sacred Texts series. The volume was the winner of this year's Frederick J. Streng Book Award, which was presented by Amos Yong (Regent University). Lefebure pointed out that biblical wisdom literature and the Dhammapada both insist [End Page 129] that how we view the world largely shapes our happiness or unhappiness, and that both describe "decidedly unskillful and skillful ways to live."Between the Saturday morning session and the members' meeting that followed, Karen Enriquez presented the graduate student award to Kyeongil Jung, a student of Paul Knitter's at Columbia University-Union Theological Seminary. He gave a brief synopsis of his award-winning paper, "A Buddhist-Christian Story of Peace and Justice," also included in this volume. [End Page 130]Copyright © 2012 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

L'A. examine l'idée, présentée comme évidente par ceux qui veulent « réhabiliter » le psychologisme, que l' « antipsychologisme » des pères fondateurs de la philosophie analytique serait rendu caduc par les progrès des « sciences de l'esprit ». Or le projet wittgensteinien de dépsychologiser la psychologie dépasse le cadre dudit antipsychologisme, et définit ce qui peut être pensé, donc dit, dans les termes d'une philosophie de l'esprit qui serait logique en un sens nouveau. The A. criticizes the idea, commonly (...) accepted among philosophers who avow psychologism, that Frege and Wittgenstein's « antipsychologism » is now outdated by the development of the new sciences of the mind. Wittgenstein's project to undo the psychologizing of psychology goes much further than the so-called antipsychologism, thus defining anew the thinkable, hence the sayable, in terms of a logical philosophy of mind. (shrink)