bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Practical Reasoning
Authors: Richardson Henry S. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractPractical reasoning is something that each of us sometimes engages in when we are figuring out what to do. When we think explicitly about what to do in light of the reasons we take ourselves to have, we are engaging in practical reasoning. Of course, we often exercise complex practical skills without engaging in explicit thinking about what to do. Examples might include a soldier picking his way through an enemy village or a florist putting together a bouquet. To call these skillful actions exercises of “practical reasoning” would be to stretch that term so far as to lose contact with the main body of philosophical thinking about practical reasoning, which takes it to be an explicit mode of thinking.
Guo Xiang
Authors: Ziporyn Brook 
Published: January 2013

AbstractGuo Xiang (252–312) is often classified in English‐language writings as a “Neo‐Daoist,” but in reality his work is a combination and harmonization of ethical insights from Confucian and early Daoist thought by means of an innovative and radical metaethical theory of his own devising (seeDaiost Ethics; Confucian Ethics).
Companions in Guilt Strategy
Authors: Lillehammer Hallvard 
Published: January 2013

AbstractPhilosophers often seek to defend the credentials of one set of disputed claims by comparing them to other claims with which they are said to have important features in common. Some arguments of this kind have a “companions in guilt” form (Mackie 1977: 39). Companions in guilt arguments are designed to defend the credentials of one set of claims, A, by showing that some of the features of A‐claims that are thought to be problematic are shared by another set of claims, B, the credentials of which are less controversial. With respect to these features, A‐claims and B‐claims are said to be companions in guilt. In other words, if the credentials of A‐claims are undermined by possessing these features, then so are the credentials of B‐claims, all other things being equal. On the assumption that the credentials of B‐claims are not undermined by the fact that they possess these features, then neither are the credentials of A‐claims.
Marriage
Authors: Brake Elizabeth 
Published: January 2013

AbstractMarriage can be broadly defined as a legal, social, or religious institution which regulates, recognizes, and supports intimate personal relationships, typically sexual, between at least two parties. The historical and cultural variability of marital forms and purposes makes a narrower definition difficult. Unsurprisingly, in light of this variousness, much philosophical debate over marriage concerns its proper definition. Debates in moral philosophy have focused on defining the proper purpose of marriage, and accordingly, its essential form, obligations, and relation to the human good. Debates in political philosophy have concerned what legal definition of marriage justice requires; recent focal points of these debates have included same‐sex marriage, polygamy, and the effects of marriage law on gender equality.
Vaccination Policies
Authors: Verweij Marcel 
Published: January 2013

AbstractVaccination involves priming the immune system with an antigenic agent that mimics a virus or bacterium, which results in immunity against the “real” microorganism. Collective vaccination policies have played an important role in the control of infectious disease worldwide. They can serve the utilitarian aim to protect public health – hence welfare – and also promote fairness: making essential vaccines accessible to all members of the public. Yet as more and more vaccines are developed, societies face the question of how far to go in expanding public programs. Decisions about adopting new vaccines in the program will require combining scientific evidence about the disease and the vaccine, with value judgments about, for example, the extent to which a disease poses a threat to public health (Verweij and Dawson 2004; Houweling et al. 2010). It makes sense to promote transparency of such (expert) deliberations because one cannot expect that citizens simply accept every government vaccination policy.
Capital Punishment
Authors: Reiman Jeffrey 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThough “killing as punishment,” to use Hugo Bedau's (2004) striking phrase, is sometimes proposed for serious crimes other than murder, such as treason, or limited to especially heinous murders, here, for simplicity's sake, it will be considered primarily as punishment for premeditated murder (seeCriminal Justice Ethics). Most typically, arguments for or against capital punishment, paralleling arguments for punishment in general, concern either the death penalty's effectiveness as a deterrent to future murders (seeDeterrence), or the death penalty's capacity to provide murderers with what they deserve (seeDesert). Additionally, some arguments point to features special to the punishment of death, such as its irrevocability, the especially harsh conditions of life on death row awaiting execution, or whether killing criminals is compatible with respecting their special dignity as rational or moral agents (seeRespect); alongside of these are other arguments that apply throughout the criminal justice system but apply to this penalty with particular force because of these special features; here is included the notorious racial bias in capital sentencing (seeRacism). Accordingly, the discussion here will be divided into three sections: “Deterrence,” “Desert,” and “Special Features of the Death Penalty.”
Stem Cell Research
Authors: Baylis FranÇoise 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThree reasons are given for the pursuit of human stem cell research: to increase understanding of normal cell development; to screen new drugs in vitro; and to provide tissue for cell‐based regenerative medicine. Not surprisingly, public enthusiasm for human stem cell research centers on the promise of regenerative medicine where there is the prospect of developing transplantation therapies for patients with debilitating or life‐threatening conditions such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes, traumatic spinal cord injury, neurological degeneration, and congenital heart disease.
Highest Good
Authors: Broadie Sarah 
Published: January 2013

AbstractFor most ancient Greek ethical systems, “What is the highest good (summum bonum)?” was the fundamental question. In the context of a search for practical guidance, the question is about the highest good realizable by human beings. Thus it might be claimed that God alone deserves the absolute title of “the highest good,” but since, anyway in traditional theism, God is assumed to be existent eternally and independently of our actions, “God” is not a relevant answer when the question is asked from the standpoint of human ethics. This of course allows the ethical philosopher to identify the highest practicable good with a theologically defined state of affairs, e.g., the condition of our being at one with God.
Executive Compensation
Authors: Donaldson Thomas 
Published: January 2013

Abstract

A central ethical issue with executive compensation involves the variance between executive and nonexecutive compensation relative to norms of fairness (
see
Justice). Philosophical and empirical analyses have criticized executive compensation on the grounds of fairness and distributive justice (Harris 2009). Dramatic variance in the salary and bonus packages of executives versus nonexecutives in modern, for‐profit corporations is evident in demographic data. This variance is often highlighted in studies that compare salary and bonus packages of the average chief executive officer (CEO) to those of the average production worker. For example, in 1970 the comparison ratio in the United States was 25 to 1, with CEOs earning on average $700,000. By 2000 it had risen to at least 90 to 1, with CEOs earning on average $2.2 million (Murphy and Zabojnik 2004). Some often‐cited estimates in the popular media placed the ratio even higher, e.g., 364 to 1, or 531 to 1. Variance also exists in executive pay across different countries, with countries such as Japan and Spain displaying relatively lower ratios of executive‐to‐worker pay to countries such as the US and the UK.
Skepticism, Moral
Authors: Zimmerman Aaron 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThere are a number of varieties of moral skepticism.Reasons skepticsdoubt that we have any reason to act morally when we know that we can best realize our aims by acting immorally instead.Motives skepticsdoubt that we are ever moved to forgo an otherwise desirable course of action from our belief in its immorality.Nihilistsclaim that nothing is immoral; everything is permitted.Epistemic moral skepticsdoubt whether we have any moral knowledge or are justified in persisting in any of our moral beliefs.Metaethical moral skepticsaccept the existence of moral knowledge but deny its objectivity. Responses to moral skepticism are legion, but each form continues to attract adherents.
Explanations, Moral
Authors: Sinclair Neil 
Published: January 2013

AbstractA moral explanation is an explanation of a particular or type of event (or fact or state of affairs) that features moral terms in the explaining phrase. Here are some examples. First, one way of reading the quote that begins this essay is as the claim that, in the broad sweep of history, societies tend toward more just institutions, and that they do so precisely because these institutions are just. This is a moral explanation of social development. Second, historians might claim that “The injustice of slavery contributed to its demise”: this is a moral explanation of a historical event. Third, I might say that “I believe that Hitler was morally depraved because he was morally depraved”: this is a moral explanation of a moral belief. Finally, philosophers sometimes say things like “In the original Trolley case, it is morally right to flick the switch, because this will lead to the morally best outcome”: this is a moral explanation of a particular moral fact (seeTROLLEY PROBLEM).
Ethics of Competitive Sport
Authors: Walsh Adrian 
Published: January 2013

Abstract

Competitive sport raises many significant ethical issues. Perhaps the most important of these – and to which the most attention has been paid – concerns how individuals should conduct themselves when engaging in competitive sport. Topics considered here include cheating and the use of performance‐enhancing drugs. There are also important ethical questions that arise out of the central role sport plays in our cultural and political lives, such as what role it plays in damaging or enhancing society and whether sport itself should be subject to political evaluation. The serious examination of these questions is relatively recent, beginning with Weiss's text
Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry
(1969). At the present time there are only two English‐language philosophical journals devoted to sport:
Journal of the Philosophy of Sport
and
Sport, Ethics and Philosophy
.
Employment at Will
Authors: Werhane Patricia H. , Radin Tara J. 
Published: January 2013

Abstract“Employment at Will” (EAW) is an American common‐law doctrine that governs a majority of employment relationships in the private sector of the economy in the United States (www.workplacefairness.org). Indeed, the United States is the only industrialized country that has such a doctrine. In the absence of an express contract, EAW specifies the terms of the employment relationship, i.e., essentially, that there are no terms – that either the employer or the employee can change the employment relationship at any time, for any reason, for no reason, just not for a reason contrary to law. Unlike employment relationships in the private sector, employees in the public sector are guaranteed due‐process procedures and protection for whistleblowing.
Hobbes, Thomas
Authors: Lloyd S. A. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThomas Hobbes (1588–1679), the famed English philosopher often taken to be the father of modern social contract theory (seeSocial Contract), is best known for his absolutist political philosophy. But does he have a distinct and genuinely moral philosophy? Scholars are divided on this point, for there are several plausible ways of interpreting Hobbes' remarks concerning such concepts of morality as good and evil, right and wrong, obligation, duty, and sin. Hobbes can be read as having attempted to reduce morality to personal prudence (seePrudence), thus effectively eliminating it as a distinctive element of practical reasoning (seePractical Reasoning). Alternatively, he can be read as having endorsed ethical egoism (seeEgoism), or a divine command theory of morality (seeDivine Command), or an agency‐centered natural law theory (seeNatural Law). The arena of contention is Hobbes' laws of nature. Hobbes tells us explicitly that the laws of nature are the one and only true moral philosophy. Scholars, then, are concerned to understand the meaning and status of Hobbes' laws of nature. Are these merely prudential recommendations to the agent concerning how best to preserve his own life? Or are they commands from God the moral status of which depends on their having been so commanded? Or are they rules for the preservation of human communities – rules derived from the necessary desire of any rational agent to secure an environment in which her agency may be effectively exercised?
Public Reason
Authors: Laden Anthony Simon 
Published: January 2013

Abstract“Public reason” has come to be a term of art in deliberative democratic theory (seeDemocracy). To understand it and the debates over its precise characterization, we can start from the problem it addresses. Governing, as opposed to merely counseling, involves the use or at least the possibility of coercion. For a democratic government to govern legitimately, its license to use coercion cannot itself be acquired coercively. The noncoercive acquisition of a license to coerce can be achieved if citizens accept the reasons for granting the license. However, in any free society, citizens accept and reject different reasons to grant such a license. When a government's license to coerce is based on reasons that some citizens reasonably reject, then that license has been acquired coercively from those citizens, and so the government fails the test of democratic legitimacy. The idea of public reason, then, is the idea of a shared set of reasons on the basis of which a democratic society could govern itself legitimately. As John Rawls puts it, public reason “concerns how the political relation is to be understood” (Rawls 1999a: 574;seeCitizenship).
Reconciliation
Authors: Murphy Colleen 
Published: January 2013

AbstractReconciliation broadly refers to one kind of response to conflict among ideas, memories, and/or individuals. It involves aprocessthrough which a certaingoalorend‐stateis achieved. Below I survey two general kinds of reconciliation. The first is reconciliation as the process of rendering intelligible seemingly incompatible ideas, accounts, or memories. The second is reconciliation as the process of repairing and rebuilding damaged relationships. A central ethical question surrounding reconciliation concerns the justifiability of its pursuit. Accounts of reconciliation must distinguish it from, for example, resignation or acquiescence to injustice and oppression.
Rousseau, Jean‐Jacques
Authors: Simpson Matthew 
Published: January 2013

AbstractAlone among modern European thinkers, Rousseau (1712–78) was both a great moralist and a significant moral philosopher. As a moralist, he developed an original vision of human nature and human fulfillment along with an analysis of the forces hindering people from achieving happiness in the modern world; as a moral philosopher, he presented a theory of right action and the grounds of moral obligation that has shaped centuries of debate about rights, duties, and authority. Both aspects of his ethical thought have provoked widely divergent interpretations and they remain controversial, both as to their meaning and the soundness of their argumentation. Born in Geneva but living most of his adult life in France, Rousseau identified the decay beneath the glittering facade both of theancien régimeand of the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment. In the end, he was persecuted by both camps and was inspired to create, as one scholar put it, “a dazzling one‐man alternative Enlightenment” (Hulliung 1994: 4). His works remain notable for their originality, depth, influence, and style.
Homosexuality
Authors: Corvino John 
Published: January 2013

AbstractHomosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction toward, or activity with, members of one's own sex or gender. There are many ways to approach homosexuality and ethics. Traditional discussions typically focus on the morality of homosexual conductper se. Alternatively, one might focus on the morality of society's treatment of gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons, or one might look at moral challenges that are unique to, or at least typical of, such persons – for instance whether, when, and how to “come out“ as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
Levinas, Emmanuel
Authors: Bernasconi Robert 
Published: January 2013

AbstractA knowledge of Emmanuel Levinas' life is more helpful for understanding his philosophy than is usually the case with philosophers, because he understood his life as dominated by the “presentiment and memory of the Nazi horror” (Levinas 1990a: 291), and the same could be said of his philosophy. He was witness to some of the most violent events of the twentieth century as well as some of its intellectual high points. Born into a Jewish family in Kovno, Lithuania, Levinas (1906–95) was a refugee during World War I and the Russian Revolution. He went to Strasbourg University in France in 1923, but a year at Freiburg University in Germany beginning in 1928, which enabled him to study phenomenology first with Edmund Husserl (seeHusserl, Edmund) and then with Martin Heidegger (seeHeidegger, Martin), had the most impact on him. In the 1930s Levinas was the foremost interpreter in France of both these thinkers, although after 1933 he took a critical distance from Heidegger because of the latter's association with National Socialism. Levinas was a prisoner of war in Germany for five years during World War II, saved by his status as a soldier from the Holocaust in which he lost almost all his relatives. He is perhaps the foremost of the philosophers identified as post‐Holocaust thinkers.
Rawls, John
Authors: Reidy David A. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractJohn Rawls (1921–2002) was born and raised in Baltimore. He earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy from Princeton. After graduating he served in the infantry in World War II, earning the Bronze Star. The war behind him, he returned to Princeton in 1946 to pursue a PhD in philosophy, earning his degree in 1950. After a pivotal year (1952–3) at Oxford University, he joined the philosophy department at Cornell. He spent the academic year 1959–60 visiting the Harvard philosophy department and then left Cornell to help establish the newly founded philosophy department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1962 he left MIT to join the philosophy faculty at Harvard on a permanent basis. He published his magnum opus,A Theory of Justice, in 1971. It was eventually translated into dozens of languages and has been widely studied around the world. He retired from Harvard in 1991 but continued to teach for several more years. He wrote and published until shortly before his death in 2002.
Guilt
Authors: Anderson Scott A. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThe concept of guilt enters into ethics with two different but related referents. It can refer to anormative state or status, contrasted with “innocence,” that is predicated most often of agents and/or actions. In this framework, “guilt” is frequently discussed in terms of its relationships to concepts such as “responsibility,” “blame,” “intention,”and “conscience,”and related to the justification for punishment (seeBlame; Conscience; Intention; Punishment; Responsibility). “Guilt”can also refer to apsychologicalelement in a human being (or conceivably in other animals), most often described as an emotion (seeEmotion; Sentiments, Moral), and contrasted with other emotions such as shame (seeShame and Honor), pride (seePride), or anger. The two referents are frequently thought to be nonaccidentally related, and hence conceptually intertwined: the psychological feeling of guilt may be hoped to track the normative concept, and the normative concept believed to warrant feelings of guilt on the part of a guilty party. But the two referents may occur individually without the other, as guilt is sometimes felt in circumstances where there is no evident breach of normative duty (seeDuty and Obligation); and people do sometimes violate laws and morality without feeling guilt for it. Philosophers have been particularly interested in guilt (in respect of both sorts of referents) for its functional properties as well as for giving an account of its content and place in normative theory.
Frondizi, Risieri
Authors: MacMullan Terrance 
Published: January 2013

Abstract

Risieri Frondizi (1910–83) was an Argentinean philosopher and educational reformer whose work on axiology (
see
Aesthetics and Ethics; Value Pluralism), process metaphysics, political philosophy (
see
Political Ethics), and gestalt theory (
see
Organic Unities) earned him great international acclaim. His wide global influence can be attributed to his travels across the globe as well as his ability to write and converse in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and educational reform in English, Spanish, and Italian. While his work is too stylistically varied and topically diverse to categorize easily, the most salient features of his scholarship include an emphasis on praxis, or the merging of theory and action in lived experience, as well as an attempt to use a careful analysis of lived experience to reconcile long‐standing philosophical arguments and debates (
see
Praxis).
Dual‐Use Research
Authors: Selgelid Michael J. 
Published: January 2013

Abstract

Dual‐use research is research that leads (or might be expected to lead) to the generation of information and/or technology that can be used for both good and bad purposes. Of particular concern is well‐intentioned life science research that aims to promote advancements in medicine but might also facilitate development of biological weapons of mass destruction (
see
Weapons Research and Development). During the first decade of the twenty‐first century, dual‐use life science research has been one of the most controversial issues regarding the bioterrorist threat (
see
Terrorism), and a central topic of debate about science policy. Attention to this topic is associated with recent rapid advances in genetics and heightened fears of bioterrorism that resulted from the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001 and the anthrax attacks that occurred soon afterwards. Given the potentially severe consequences that could result from malicious use of dual‐use life science research, it has been argued that increased oversight of dual‐use research and/or publication of dual‐use discoveries may be necessary, that science codes of conduct for scientists (explicitly addressing dual‐use issues) should be adopted (
see
Codes of Ethics), and/or that scientists should be further educated about ethics.