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121. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 1
Matthew Gildersleeve Trading Accuracy or Affiliation for Bad Faith in Social Influence Experimental Psychology
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Currently there is an unattached link between the study of social influence in experimental psychology and bad faith in the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. The methods of psychology and philosophy differ significantly and can be integrated into a unified whole to provide enhanced insight into a topic of investigation compared to what can be achieved separately in each of these disciplines. The goal of this paper is to review the social influence literature with the aim of expositing, integrating and synthesising the findings with Sartre’s analysis of bad faith and authenticity. As a result, this paper aims to uncover the scientific findings that provide clarification to the findings of bad faith in Sartre’s existential philosophy. Precisely, this paper will provide concrete and descriptive empirical examples of the experimental causes and conditions that appear to be identified by participants as a reason to act in bad faith. Specifically, this paper provides evidence that bad faith appears to arise when an individual believes she should be accurate or affiliated with the group. An analysis of the concepts that are necessary to understand bad faith will also be reviewed to uncover the arguments that provide clarification to understanding conformity found in the social influence literature. This paper will benefit both psychologists and philosophers by bridging these two fields of investigation. Further work with the integration of these findings into existential psychotherapy is encouraged and described throughout.
122. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 1
About the Contributors
123. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Elaine E. Englehardt, Michael S. Pritchard Teaching Practical Ethics
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A common view is that, whether taught in philosophy departments or elsewhere, practical ethics should include some introduction to philosophical ethics. But even an entire course cannot afford much time for this and expect to do justice to ethical concerns in the practical area (for example, business, engineering, or medicine). The concern is that ethical theories would need to be “watered down,” or over-simplified. So, we should not expect that this will be in good keeping with either the theories or the practical concerns.In addressing this problem, we turn to philosopher Thomas Reid (1710–1796). He insisted that, because morality is for everyone, one needn’t be a philosopher to understand its requirements. Although it can be useful to organize our moral thinking around a few basic principles, a system of morality is more like a system of botany or mineralogy than geometry. Noting this can guide us in constructing effective courses in practical ethics.
124. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Luigi Saccà A Biophilosophical Model of Human Dignity: The Argument from Development in a Four-Dimensionalist Perspective
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The notion of dignity is central in most international documents concerning bioethics and biolaw, but its significance and its philosophical foundation are a matter of incessant debate. I propose to define dignity as a unique property of human beings stemming from the developmental process of rationality and self-consciousness (R&SC) and conferring on them equal moral rights. A central claim of this essay is that dignity is not an ontological property but has a time-space dimension. It comes to be in the individuated embryo coincident with the beginning of an individuated development of R&SC and ends with irreversible damage of the brain support for R&SC. The philosophical foundation of the model is the argument from development (AFD). Development is the traceable and measurable biological process that assures continuity from the individuated embryo to adulthood. The metaphysical ground of development is also discussed within a four-dimensionalist framework.
125. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Gregory Robson What We Owe the Global Poor: In Defense of a Moderate Principle of Sacrifice
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Peter Singer’s 1971 essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” sparked a surge in interest among philosophers in the obligations of the global rich beneficently to assist the global poor. Richard Miller argues that Singer’s account is too demanding and proposes his Principle of Sympathy as an alternative to it. I first argue against Miller’s view and, in particular, his insistence that the value of pursuing worthwhile goals that are close to one’s heart significantly weakens one’s obligation to assist the least well-off. Secondly, I critique Singer’s account and argue for a substantially revised version thereof. The Moderate Principle of Sacrifice (MPS) that I defend includes four revisions to Singer’s account. These revisions allow it adequately to account for nonmoral value; the suffering of donor as well as recipient; serious need rather than just poverty; and the need for a long-term approach to global poverty relief.
126. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Michael Davis World Government: A Lockean Perspective
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Most discussions of world government seem to take place today, as they have for a half century at least, in what is largely, if not entirely, a network of concepts that go back to Hobbes. Though the concepts now belong to (political) realism, they seem to be on loan to almost all those participating in the discussion. We might summarize that conceptual network in this relatively simple argument for the inevitability of world government: 1. Without a world government, states (“nation-states”) are like the sovereign individuals in Hobbes’s state of nature, free and equal but miserable prey to both nature and each other.2. By the same logic that drives Hobbes’s individuals to give up their sovereignty to a state, states must give up their sovereignty to a world government or suffer destruction (by nuclear war, climate change, or other global catastrophe).3. If a state is rational, it will (if possible) avoid its own destruction.4. States are rational (and world government is possible)Therefore, states will give up their sovereignty to a world government. What I find most noteworthy about this argument is that it fails in two distinct ways. First, all four of its premises seem to be (more or less) false. Second, on a realist interpretation, the premises are inconsistent. Realism makes a world state conceptually impossible—and so makes rational defense of a world state impossible.
127. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Alan Tomhave Global Government and Global Citizenship
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T. H. Marshall described three stages of citizenship leading to full membership of the community in which one resides: civil, political, and social. This development takes place within the context of states. It is appropriate at this point in history to ask if there is a further change to citizenship that reflects the increasing globalization of the world, to look into the possibility of a global citizen and ask further if this possible global citizen requires also a global or world state. This paper argues that states are not necessary for the concept of citizenship, and thus that a global state is not necessary for global citizenship. One quick objection to this de-coupling of the state and citizenship is the claim that citizenship is a legal status within a full-fledged legal system. Thus, one of the main goals of this paper is to argue that a legal status of “citizen” is neither necessary nor sufficient for citizenship. Citizenship should be understood as a moral concept, not a legal one. Further, for the same reason that a legal conception is insufficient, the traditional liberal view of citizenship is also insufficient; both the legal and liberal views of citizenship are too anemic, only a republican view of citizenship is sufficiently robust to satisfy the promise of citizenship.
128. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez Symposium on World Government/World Governance: Introduction
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Introduction to the World Government /World Governance symposium.
129. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Todd May From World Government to World Governance: An Anarchist Perspective
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Anarchism, of whatever type, is likely to be resistance to the idea of world government. But this does not entail that it is resistance to world governance. Governance can happen at a variety of levels. It does not have to be top-down, as with world government, but can arise from the bottom up. To assume otherwise is to assume that governance happens only through hierarchies and not through the building of networks. The question facing those of us who would like to ask about how people’s behavior might be non-hierarchically governed in a world sense is that of how to construct networks of practices that presuppose the equality of everyone rather than asking what kind of transnational government would be adequate to the task of governing everyone.
130. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Jacob Blair Self-Defense, Proportionality, and Defensive War against Mitigated Aggression
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A nation commits mitigated aggression by threatening to kill the citizens of a victim nation if and only if they do not submit to being ruled in a non-egregiously oppressive way. Such aggression primarily threatens a nation’s common way of life (CWL). According to David Rodin, a war against mitigated aggression is automatically disproportionate, as the right of lethal self-defense only extends to protecting against being killed or enslaved. Two strategies have been adopted in response to Rodin. The first strategy grants that CWL is insufficiently valuable to lethally defend, however, other considerations can satisfy the proportionality requirement. I argue that this strategy is not persuasive. The second strategy argues for the sufficient value of CWL. This, however, fails to answer the forceful ‘benign dictator’ objection. I respond to this objection by grounding the proportionality of a defensive war in the value of what Phillip Pettit calls ‘anti-power’.
131. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Tony Doyle Posner on Privacy
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Richard Posner is a leading contemporary critic of privacy. He is highly skeptical of most appeals to privacy, characterizing them as self-serving attempts to keep discrediting, embarrassing, or inconvenient facts from others. Accordingly, he is opposed to the legal protection of most personal information. Posner calls his own theory of privacy “economic.” He argues that the social “markets” in which people sell themselves as employees, business associates, friends, or mates would be far more efficient if nearly all personal information were available to potential “buyers.” I offer two direct criticisms of this view. I then attempt to show that Posner’s conception of privacy is too narrow in the light of the challenge presented by the so-called new panopticon that digital technology has created. I close with a criticism of Posner’s endorsement of sweeping surveillance of U.S. citizens’ e-communications in the name of fighting terrorism.
132. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
About the Contributors
133. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Scott F. Aikin Responsible Sports Spectatorship and the Problem of Fantasy Leagues
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Given a variety of cases of failed spectatorship, a set of criteria for properly attending to a sporting event are defined. In light of these criteria, it is shown that Fantasy League participation occasions a peculiar kind of failure of sports spectatorship.
134. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 27 > Issue: 2
Joseph Mazor International Rights Violations and Media Coverage: The Case for Adversarial Impartiality
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I argue that the best way for journalists to enable their audience to determine the truth about international rights questions and to grant the parties’ claims a fair hearing is by adhering to strict impartiality—i.e., by producing coverage that does not reflect the journalist’s personal views on the rights question. I then argue that that the best way for journalists to provide strictly impartial coverage is by utilizing a legal trial, and more specifically an adversarial trial as a model for impartial presentation. Unlike the traditional Just-the-Facts model, the adversarial model explicitly requires the journalist to challenge the narratives of the parties and to cover the relevant normative controversies. It solves the problem of partiality in content choice by asking the journalist to take up the perspective of a principled zealous advocate for both sides of the international rights question.
135. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
About the Contributors
136. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Jean Harvey Beyond Policy and Law: Human Security and the Realm of the Informal
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In recent decades governments around the world have been increasingly concerned about terrorism and have introduced new laws and policies in an attempt to combat it. I examine here the weakest link in chains of security management: what I call the realm of “the informal,” where neither law nor formal policy is at work, but where stereotypes, traditional sayings and jokes, social ideals often promoted by mass media, etiquette requirements certainly are. This realm is so dangerous precisely because of its deceptively innocuous appearance. First, I explain the kinds of things that function in the informal realm, revealing that it is more extensive than might first appear. Secondly, I describe three real-life examples where some informal factor plays a vital role in a catastrophic outcome, to show that such seemingly trivial matters can acquire tremendous practical significance in critical situations. My focus is on the influence of some informal factor on individuals who are in no way trying to threaten security, but rather intend to maintain or enhance it. Their roles call for that commitment. Finally I consider one of the three examples more carefully and illustratively, to demonstrate some of the key points raised. Currently, thinking about the dangers informal factors pose is routinely reactive (rather than proactive), often prompted by a catastrophe that has already occurred, but this means we miss some of what could be learned from the catastrophe. We need a far more proactive approach to those factors in the informal sphere and we need a much stronger focus on individuals who are responsible for and committed to maintaining security. Otherwise threats to security will remain are more serious than is typically acknowledged.
137. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Carol Hay Integrity: The Peculiar, the Arbitrary, and the Different
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This paper attempts to address certain shortcomings in the various accounts of the virtue of integrity that appear in the philosophical literature. Specifically, most analyses of integrity fail to give an adequate account of cases where we might want to attribute integrity to certain aspects of a person’s life but refrain from attributing integrity to his or her life as a whole. They also fail to give an adequate account of what we are to say about the integrity of people with peculiar or arbitrary commitments. Attending to these shortcomings will shed new light on an issue that has received considerably more philosophical attention: the question of how we are to judge the reasonableness of others’ conceptions of the good, particularly when these conceptions are radically different from our own.
138. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Anja Matwijkiw, Bronik Matwijkiw The Missing Link in Stakeholder Theory: A Philosophical Framework
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The authors take a fresh look at the distinction between narrow and broad stakeholder theory, as represented by the business management models of Milton Friedman and R. Edward Freeman respectively. The main goal is a critical examination of the criteria and consequences of a practical application in the area of international law, a project that involves scrutinizing each version’s doctrinal assumptions as well as a comparative assessment. Emphasizing fundamental rights and corresponding duties, the starting point is that neither Friedman nor Freeman has a philosophically developed framework for the otherwise central value concepts. As regards economic/social rights, this results in a broad (stakeholder theory) defense that is as unsubstantiated as the attack which the narrow counterpart launches. However, once the Classical Choice Theory of Rights and the Modern Interest Theory of Rights are added to the case of Friedman versus Freeman, this can be adjudicated—using a number of different test procedures—in favor of a comprehensive typology of (civil/political and economic/social) rights and the Modern Interest Theory of Rights. In the course of adjudication, the authors also supplement the broad approach with a framework for needs that accords with Freeman’s proposed logic of value concepts.
139. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
James P. Sterba Precis
140. International Journal of Applied Philosophy: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1
Norman K. Swazo A Grave Problem of Conscience: Kantian Morality in the Face of Psychopathy
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Clinical psychologists remain puzzled about the diagnostic basis and therapeutic disposition of individuals who present with a clinical profile of psychopathy. Psychopaths have been characterized as lacking in conscience and presenting a mask of sanity, thus differentiating them from psychotics and neurotics. The clinical profile of the psychopathic personality seems at odds with Kant’s moral philosophy, in which Kant characterizes not only the central role of conscience in moral judgment, but in which Kant also insists that every person has a conscience. In this paper the clinical assessments presented by Cleckley and Hare in particular are juxtaposed to Kant’s philosophical position, thereby to gain an understanding what is at the base of the psychopathic personality disorder. The clinical and the moral-philosophical assessments are reconciled, nonetheless leaving the clinical psychologist with the difficult task of therapeutic disposition.