Catching Gender-Identity Production in Flight: Making the Commonplace Visible.Darryl W.Coulthard -2009 -Journal of Research Practice 5 (2):Article M5.detailsThe purpose of this article is to develop and illustrate an approach for making the commonplace visible in a natural, as opposed to manipulated, social setting. The key research task was to find a way of capturing the ongoing production or enactment of the self that provides some insight into the way in which it is produced in a routine, matter of fact way. The article takes a number of steps to develop a research approach to the task. First, gender-identity (...) was selected as a more specific aspect of self-production. Second, the concept of "flashpoints" was used to refer to a particular moment in the routine which achieves some significance or salience as a result of the participants seizing upon some otherwise unremarkable action or statement and twisting it to their purpose. In this study, the purpose was gender-identity creation. Primary school children in the classroom and their teachers were the participants of the study. Through the use of flashpoints, the article demonstrates how gender-identity production of these children can be caught in flight. The article concludes that this approach can be added to the researcher's toolkit. (shrink)
Technophilia, neo‐Luddism, eDependency and the judgement of Thamus.DarrylCoulthard &Susan Keller -2012 -Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 10 (4):262-272.detailsPurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reflect on society's relationship with technology and particularly our increasing dependence on electronic technology – so‐called eDependency. The paper argues that technology is not neutral and we must engage with the moral issues that arise from our relationship with it.Design/methodology/approachSociety's relationship with technology is examined through the lens of Socrates' consideration of the technology of writing. It identifies “technophilia” as a major theme in society and “neo‐Luddism” as the Socrates‐like examination of the benefits (...) of technology.FindingsWhile rejecting both technology determinism and technology presentism the paper argues technology is not neutral and does afford social change within a particular social ecology. The authors suggest that ultimately the use of all technology, including the technology underpinning eDependency, leads to important moral questions which deserve considered debate. The paper concludes by arguing that the Information Systems (IS) discipline should take the mantle of King Thamus and that the study of these issues should become a key concern for the discipline.Originality/valueIn an age of technophilia, this paper calls considered debate on the moral issues that arise from our relationship with technology, how it is appropriated, to whose benefit, and how we change it and will be changed by it. (shrink)
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Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada.Glen S.Coulthard -2007 -Contemporary Political Theory 6 (4):437-460.detailsOver the last 30 years, the self-determination efforts and objectives of Indigenous peoples in Canada have increasingly been cast in the language of ‘recognition’ — recognition of cultural distinctiveness, recognition of an inherent right to self-government, recognition of state treaty obligations, and so on. In addition, the last 15 years have witnessed a proliferation of theoretical work aimed at fleshing out the ethical, legal and political significance of these types of claims. Subsequently, ‘recognition’ has now come to occupy a central (...) place in our efforts to comprehend what is at stake in contestations over identity and difference in colonial contexts more generally. In this paper, I employ Frantz Fanon's critique of Hegel's master–slave dialectic to challenge the now hegemonic assumption that the structure of domination that frames Indigenous–state relations in Canada can be undermined via a liberal politics of recognition. Against this assumption, I argue that instead of ushering in an era of peaceful coexistence grounded on the Hegelian ideal of reciprocity, the contemporary politics of recognition promises to reproduce the very configurations of colonial power that Indigenous demands for recognition have historically sought to transcend. (shrink)
Stakeholder Management Theory: A Critical Theory Perspective.Darryl Reed -1999 -Business Ethics Quarterly 9 (3):453-483.detailsAbstract:This article elaborates a normative Stakeholder Management Theory (SHMT) from a critical theory perspective. The paper argues that the normative theory elaborated by critical theorists such as Habermas exhibits important advantages over its rivals and that these advantages provide the basis for a theoretically more adequate version of SHMT. In the first section of the paper an account is given of normative theory from a critical theory perspective and its advantages over rival traditions. A key characteristic of the critical theory (...) approach is expressed as a distinction between three different normative realms, viz., legitimacy, morality, and ethics. In the second section, the outlines of a theory of stakeholder management are provided. First, three basic tasks of a theoretically adequate treatment of the normative analysis of stakeholder management are identified. This is followed by a discussion of how a critical theory approach to SHMT is able to fulfill these three tasks. (shrink)
What do Corporations have to do with Fair Trade? Positive and Normative Analysis from a Value Chain Perspective.Darryl Reed -2009 -Journal of Business Ethics 86 (S1):3-26.detailsThere has been tremendous growth in the sales of certified fair trade products since the introduction of the first of these goods in the Netherlands in 1988. Many would argue that this rapid growth has been due in large part to the increasing involvement of corporations. Still, participation by corporations in fair trade has not been welcomed by all. The basic point of contention is that, while corporate participation has the potential to rapidly extend the market for fair trade goods, (...) it threatens key aspects of what many see as the original vision of fair trade – most notably a primary concern for the plight of small producers and the goal of developing an alternative approach to trade and development – and may even be undermining its long-term survival. The primary purpose of this article is to explore the normative issues involved in corporate participation in fair trade. In order to do that, however, it first provides a positive analysis of how corporations are actually involved in fair trade. In order to achieve both of these ends, the article draws upon global value chain analysis. (shrink)
Risk, Russian-roulette and lotteries: Persson and Savulescu on moral enhancement.Darryl Gunson &Hugh McLachlan -2013 -Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 16 (4):877-884.detailsThe literature concerning the possibility and desirability of using new pharmacological and possible future genetic techniques to enhance human characteristics is well-established and the debates follow some well-known argumentative patterns. However, one argument in particular stands out and demands attention. This is the attempt to tie the moral necessity of moral enhancement to the hypothesised risks that allowing cognitive enhancement will bring. According to Persson and Savulescu, cognitive enhancement should occur only if the risks they think it to poses are (...) mitigated by moral enhancement. By this they mean the compulsory and universal amplification of the disposition of altruism and the inflation of our sense of fairness, by chemical and/or genetic means. Their claim is important, intriguing and unsettling. This paper focuses on three central, but relatively neglected, features of their argument. First, there is a pernicious ambiguity in the language of ‘risk’ used by Persson and Savulescu where they tend to conflate ‘risk’ and ‘uncertainty’. Second, their use of the lottery analogy to render their position more plausible is unconvincing. It tends to distort rather than illuminate the relevant considerations. Third, Persson and Savulescu do not adequately take into account the social and individual benefits that enhancing cognition could have. If they did, it would be apparent that those benefits alone would outweigh the considerations used to justify accompanying CE with ME. (shrink)
Resource extraction industries in developing countries.Darryl Reed -2002 -Journal of Business Ethics 39 (3):199 - 226.detailsOver the last one hundred and fifty years, the extraction and processing of non-renewable resources has provided the basis for the three industrial revolutions that have led to the modern economies of the developed world. In the process, the nature of resource extraction firms has also changed dramatically, from small-scale operations exploiting easily accessible deposits to large, vertically integrated, capital intensive transnational corporations characterized by oligopolistic competition. In the last ten to fifteen years, coinciding with processes of economic globalization, another (...) major change has been occurring as resource extraction industries have been shifting their operations from developed to developing countries. This shift has greatly impacted the populations of these countries and raises a variety of ethical issues. This article investigates the nature of these changes and the ethical issues that arise, focusing in particular on the development impact of the activities of these industries and the potential adequacy of different policy approaches to regulating them. (shrink)
The association of moral development and moral intensity with music piracy.Darryl J. Woolley -2015 -Ethics and Information Technology 17 (3):211-218.detailsPrior research has not found a meaningful relationship between digital piracy and moral development, possibly because students do not recognize digital piracy as a moral issue. Rather than measure moral development as an individual characteristic, this study tests which components of moral development are seen as relevant to digital piracy. If some of the stages of moral development are applicable to music piracy behavior, people are more likely to pirate than to engage in other more morally intense behaviors. Some of (...) the stages of moral development are found to be associated with moral development. Proximity to the victim reduces the acceptability of music piracy. (shrink)
Voices of the silenced: the responsible self in a marginalized community.Darryl M. Trimiew -1993 - Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press.details"This book should be read by all who are interested in discerning the ethical teaching of representative African-American leaders of the nineteenth century whose voices have been long silenced by racism's insidious effects." Peter J. Paris, Princeton Theological SeminaryLaunching his investigation from H. Richard Niebuhr's enormously influential THE RESPONSIBLE SELF,Darryl Trimiew seeks to clarify and expand the implications of morally responsible behavior. He offers a corrective to Niebuhr's notion of the "fitting response" by taking the view of the (...) marginalized seriously. (shrink)
Existence as first philosophy.Darryl Wardle -2023 -South African Journal of Philosophy 42 (4):338-347.detailsThe philosophical contemplation of “first philosophy” is as old as Western philosophy itself, and yet “first philosophy” is often eschewed in contemporary philosophical thought. This is because attempts at arriving at a first philosophy have often been steeped in metaphysical thinking that aims at non-finite foundations as the constitutive ground of human reality. However, in our contemporary world in which metaphysical postulates render themselves increasingly outmoded and immaterial, can we still speak of first philosophy today? This is to ask whether (...) or not it may be possible to formulate a first philosophy based on strictly finite principles. This article seeks to demonstrate that the concept of finite “existence” can be read as first philosophy in the contemporary thought of Jean-Luc Nancy (1940–2021). Firstly, a conceptual analysis on the concepts of “being” and “existence” will be carried out with the express purpose of trying to ascertain the meaningful difference between these two concepts in Nancy’s thought, if indeed such a difference exists at all. From this conceptual analysis, it will be demonstrated that Nancy consistently and effectively elevates the concept of finite existence to philosophical primacy above that of non-finite being and, as a result, brings to light the possibility of (re)thinking existence as first philosophy in Nancy’s thought. (shrink)
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My Company Cares About My Success…I Think: Clarifying Why and When a Firm’s Ethical Reputation Impacts Employees’ Subjective Career Success.Darryl B. Rice,Regina M. Taylor,Yiding Wang,Sijing Wei &Valentina Ge -2023 -Journal of Business Ethics 186 (1):159-177.detailsThe value of a company’s ethical reputation has become a focal point for management researchers. We seek to join this conversation and extend the research centered on a firm’s ethical reputation. We accomplish this by shifting our focus away from its impact on external stakeholders to its impact on internal stakeholders. To this end, we rely on signaling theory to explain why a firm’s ethical reputation matters to its employees in an effort to bridge the macro–micro research gap. Across two (...) studies, we propose and demonstrate that a firm’s ethical reputation impacts employee subjective career success in form of career opportunities and work–life balance. Given our signaling theory framework, we also identify and explain when two industry-level characteristics operate as boundary conditions that distort a firm’s ethical reputation signaling properties. Specifically, the results demonstrate that a firm’s ethical reputation is positively related to employees’ perceptions of career opportunities and work–life balance. The results of our studies also demonstrate that the relatively high levels of industry competition and industry regulation weaken the positive impact of a firm’s ethical reputation on career opportunities and work–life balance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)
History’s Challenge to Criminal Law Theory.Darryl Brown -2009 -Criminal Law and Philosophy 3 (3):271-287.detailsAfter briefly sketching an historical account of criminal law that emphasizes its longstanding reach into social, commercial and personal life outside the core areas of criminal offenses, this paper explores why criminal law theory has never succeeded in limiting the content of criminal codes to offenses that fit the criteria of dominant theories, particularly versions of the harm principle. Early American writers on criminal law endorsed no such limiting principles to criminal law, and early American criminal law consequently was substantively (...) broad. But even with the rise of theories in the mid-nineteenth century that sought to limit criminal lawâs reach, codified offenses continued to widely and deeply regulate social life and exceed the limits of those normative arguments. This essay suggests that this practical failure of criminal law theory occurred because it was never adopted by an institutional actor that could limit offense definitions in accord with normative commitments. Legislatures are institutionally unsuited to having their policy actions limited by principled arguments, and courts passed on the opportunity to incorporate a limiting principle for criminal law once they began, in the Lochner era, actively regulating legislative decisions through Constitutional law. The one avenue through which criminal law theory has had some success in affecting criminal codes is through the influence of specialized bodies that influence legislation, especially the American Law Institute advocacy of the Model Penal Code. But the institutional structure of American criminal law policymaking permits an unusually small role for such specialized bodies, and without such an institutional mechanism, criminal law theory is likely to continue to have little effect on actual criminal codes. (shrink)
Visible Violence in Kiki Smith's Life Wants to Live.LisaCoulthard -2004 -Journal of Medical Humanities 25 (1):21-32.detailsRecent theoretical analyses of domestic violence have posited the complicity of medical communities in erasing and obfuscating the cause of injuries. Although medical cultures have engaged in progressive initiatives to address and treat domestic violence, these medical and clinical models can render domestic violence invisible by framing the battered woman as evidentiary object. By analyzing this invisibility of domestic violence through the concept of public secrecy, in this article I consider Kiki Smith's 1982 installation piece Life Wants to Live. Using (...) medical technologies, Smith's installation offers the viewer a vision of domestic violence that recognizes its inherently problematic invisibility and emphasizes the importance of lived, bodily experience. (shrink)
A Dealer of Old Clothes: Philosophical Conversations with David Walker.Darryl Scriven -2007 - Lexington Books.detailsA Dealer of Old Clothes treats David Walker, an early nineteenth-century abolitionist, as a philosophical sage. In this text, Scriven poses philosophical questions to Walker via his Appeal and solicits philosophical answers on topics such as race, emancipatory struggle, and the problem of evil.
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Confucius in the technology realm: a philosophical approach to your school's ed tech goals.Darryl Vidal -2015 - Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.detailsConfucius in the Technology Realm is a ground-breaking new approach to the dynamic world of Education Technology. In this work, the author has decided to soften on structure and focus on art - to take a philosophical approach to the planning and management of the chaotic and ever-changing realm of Educational Technology - what would Confucius think about Ed Tech? But while providing a method of inquiry for philosophical guidance, the book is also meant to reinforce the ethereal concepts with (...) real-world, Ed Tech examples. The ultimate objectives of impacting student learning and achievement and mastery of philosophical self-discipline becomes one and the same - thus, the Tao of Education Technology may be seen as Confucius' viewpoint, helping identify the path to transcending the organization's people, policies, and processes to attain a state where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - where the education technology infrastructure and operational support structure are ingrained and embodied within the organization as a whole. (shrink)
From Environmental Stewardship To Environmental Holiness.Darryl W. Stephens -2019 -Journal of Religious Ethics 47 (3):470-500.detailsThe descriptive moment in ethical reflection is helpfully informed by a careful consideration of what religious bodies have said about moral issues such as climate change. As a case study, this article identifies and interprets primary documents of The United Methodist Church (UMC) and its predecessor institutions, providing a detailed examination of the historical development of this denomination’s environmental witness statements. Methodism's long‐standing engagement with environmental ethics, out of which a concern for anthropogenic climate change incrementally emerged, includes significant institutional (...) policies and practices. The history of Methodist environmental witness evidences a creative, faithful response by a religious denomination learning to grapple with the overwhelming problem of climate change. Describing and interpreting this history enables religious ethicists to engage Methodist environmental witness as they develop constructive models for addressing this problem. (shrink)
Evaluative concepts and objective values: Rand on moral objectivity.Darryl F. WrighT -2008 - In Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Dycus Miller & Jeffrey Paul,Objectivism, subjectivism, and relativism in ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 149-181.detailsThose familiar with Ayn Rand's ethical writings may know that she discusses issues in metaethics, and that she defended the objectivity of morality during the heyday of early non-cognitivism. But neither her metaethics, in general, nor her views on moral objectivity, in particular, have received wide study. This article elucidates some aspects of her thought in these areas, focusing on Rand's conception of the way in which moral values serve a biologically based human need, and on her account of moral (...) values as both essentially practical and epistemically objective in a sense fundamentally continuous with the objectivity of science. The bearing of her epistemological writings on her ethical thought is emphasized throughout, and her epistemology is defended against a line of criticism inspired by John McDowell's criticism of the so-called “myth of the given.”. (shrink)
What Is the Habermasian Perspective in Bioethics?Darryl Gunson -2012 -Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 21 (2):188-199.detailsThe overarching question addressed in this article is whether there is something that might reasonably be called a Habermasian approach or perspective that bioethical enquiry might utilize.
Schizophrenic Thought Insertion and Self-Experience.Darryl Mathieson -2024 -Review of Philosophy and Psychology 15 (2):523-539.detailsIn contemporary philosophy of mind and psychiatry, schizophrenic thought insertion is often used as a validating or invalidating counterexample in various theories about how we experience ourselves. Recent work has taken cases of thought insertion to provide an invalidating counterexample to the Humean denial of self-experience, arguing that deficiencies of agency in thought insertion suggest that we normally experience ourselves as the agent of our thoughts. In this paper, I argue that appealing to a breakdown in the sense of agency (...) to explain thought insertion is problematic, and that rather than following the prevailing binary approach which holds that certain features of consciousness go missing while others remain wholly intact, a better explanation involves construing thought insertion as a disturbing or disrupting of the subjectivity (for-me-ness) of experience. The result is that experiencing ourselves as the subject of our thoughts is where future research should be directed, given the robust persistence of this form of self-experience across psychopathological and non-psychopathological cases alike. (shrink)
Are All Rational Moralities Equivalent?Darryl Gunson -2011 -Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 20 (2):238-247.detailsMatti Häyry’s new book Rationality and the Genetic Challenge discusses the ethics of human genetic modification and the bioethical rationalities that inform the different ethical conclusions authors have advanced. It is aimed at correcting the belief that “only one rationality exists or one morality exists; that those that disagree [with them] are unreasonable or evil.” Häyry argues that there are multiple rationalities, and that even though ethical issues may have solutions within individual rationalities, disagreements that have their root in separate (...) rational approaches cannot be universally solved by intellectual arguments. In debates about the ethics of using new biotechnologies to genetically modify human beings, the normal state is one of fundamental disagreement over almost all of the anticipated uses to which the technology could be put. Häyry’s point is that such a state of affairs is not necessarily due to a lack of reason because there are many, equally valid, ways of being reasonable. (shrink)
Employing Normative Stakeholder Theory in Developing Countries.Darryl Reed -2002 -Business and Society 41 (2):166-207.detailsAlthough the use of stakeholder analysis to investigate corporate responsibilities has burgeoned over the past two decades, there has been relatively little workon howcorporate responsibilities may change for firms with operations in developing countries. This article argues, from a critical theory perspective, that two sets of factors tend to come together to increase the responsibilities of corporations active in developing countries to a full range of stakeholder groups: (a) the different (economic, political, and sociocultural) circumstances under which corporations have to (...) operate in developing countries and (b) several key normative principles, which typically do not come into play in the context of developed countries. (shrink)
Are intellectual property rights compatible with Rawlsian principles of justice?Darryl J. Murphy -2012 -Ethics and Information Technology 14 (2):109-121.detailsThis paper argues that intellectual property rights are incompatible with Rawls’s principles of justice. This conclusion is based upon an analysis of the social stratification that emerges as a result of the patent mechanism which defines a marginalized group and ensure that its members remain alienated from the rights, benefits, and freedoms afforded by the patent product. This stratification is further complicated, so I argue, by the copyright mechanism that restricts and redistributes those rights already distributed by means of the (...) patent mechanism. I argue that the positions of privilege established through both the patent and the copyright mechanisms are positions that do not “allow the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all.” They do not “benefit the least advantaged.” Nor are they “open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.” In making this argument I critically assess the utilitarian defense of intellectual property rights and find it insufficient to respond to the injustices manifest in our current arrangement for the protection of intellectual property rights. (shrink)
Corporate governance reforms in developing countries.Darryl Reed -2002 -Journal of Business Ethics 37 (3):223 - 247.detailsCorporate governance reforms are occurring in countries around the globe. In developing countries, such reforms occur in a context that is primarily defined by previous attempts at promoting "development" and recent processes of economic globalization. This context has resulted in the adoption of reforms that move developing countries in the direction of an Anglo-American model of governance. The most basic questions that arise with respect to these governance reforms are what prospects they entail for traditional development goals and whether alternatives (...) should be considered. This paper offers a framework for addressing these basic questions by providing an account of: 1) previous development strategies and efforts; 2) the nature and causes of the reform processes; 3) the development potential of the reforms and concerns associated with them; 4) the (potential) responsibilities of corporate governance, including the (possible) responsibilities to promote development, and; 5) different approaches to promoting governance reforms with an eye to promoting development. (shrink)
How We Got Over: The Moral Teachings of The African–American Church on Business Ethics.Darryl M. Trimiew &Michael Greene -1997 -Business Ethics Quarterly 7 (2):133-147.detailsAn analysis of the business ethics of the African-American church during and after Reconstruction reveals that it is a conflicted ethic, oscillating between two poles. The first is the sacralization of the business ethic of Booker T. Washington, in which self-help endeavors which valorize American capitalism but are preferentially oriented to the African-American community are advanced as the best and only options for economic uplift. The second is the “Blackwater” tradition, which rejects any racial discrimination and insists upon social justice. (...) The inability of the Washingtonian business ethic to address the needs of the Black underclass are explored. A new business ethic is called for, which would be committed to meeting the basic needs of the most disadvantaged members of American society and those of the “international poor.”. (shrink)
Haptic Aurality: Resonance, Listening and Michael Haneke.LisaCoulthard -2012 -Film-Philosophy 16 (1):16-29.detailsUsing Jean-Luc Nancy's productive concept of resonant listening, this article interrogates silence in the films of Michael Haneke. Arguing for a kind of open, resonating and sonorous form of philosophic listening, Nancy articulates the distinctions among listening, hearing and understanding. Working from these concepts, this article considers the particular form of resonance in the instance of cinematic silence and in particular the use of silence in the philosophically engaged cinema of Haneke.
The correspondence metaphor: Prescriptive or descriptive?Darryl Bruce -1996 -Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (2):194-195.detailsKoriat & Goldsmith's abstract correspondence metaphor is unlikely to prove useful to memory science. It aims to motivate and inform the investigation of everyday memory, but that movement has prospered without it. The irrelevance of its competitor – the more concrete storehouse metaphor – as a guiding force in memory research presages a similar fate for the correspondence perspective.
Making a difference: Critical linguistic analysis in a legal context.MalcolmCoulthard -2011 -Pragmatics and Society 2 (2):171-186.detailsOne of the major problems for Critical Discourse Analysts is how to move on from their insightful critical analyses to successfully ‘acting on the world in order to transform it’. This paper discusses, with detailed exemplification, some of the areas where linguists have moved beyond description to acting on and changing the world. Examples from three murder trials show how essential it is, in order to protect the rights of witnesses and defendants, to have audio records of significant interviews with (...) police officers. The article moves on to discuss the potentially serious consequences of the many communicative problems inherent in legal/lay interaction and illustrates a few of the linguist-led improvements to important texts. Finally, the article turns to the problems of using linguistic data to try to determine the geographical origin of asylum seekers. The intention of the article is to act as a call to arms to linguists; it concludes with the observation that ‘innumerable mountains remain for those with a critical linguistic perspective who would like to try to move one’. (shrink)
Animal Consciousness and Ethics in Asia and the Pacific.MacerDarryl -1997 -Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 10 (3):249-267.detailsThe interactions between humans, animals and the environment have shaped human values and ethics, not only the genes that we are made of. The animal rights movement challenges human beings to reconsider interactions between humans and other animals, and maybe connected to the environmental movement that begs us to recognize the fact that there are symbiotic relationships between humans and all other organisms. The first part of this paper looks at types of bioethics, the implications of autonomy and the value (...) of being alive. Then the level of consciousness of these relationships are explored in survey results from Asia and the Pacific, especially in the 1993 International Bioethics Survey conducted in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, The Philippines, Russia, Singapore and Thailand. Very few mentioned animal consciousness in the survey, but there were more biocentric comments in Australia and Japan; and more comments with the idea of harmony including humans in Thailand. Comparisons between questions and surveys will also be made, in an attempt to describe what people imagine animal consciousness to be, and whether this relates to human ethics of the relationships. (shrink)
On the origin of irreversibility in classical electrodynamic measurement processes.Darryl Leiter -1984 -Foundations of Physics 14 (9):849-863.detailsWe present a new formalism for the microscopic classical electrodynamics of point charges in which the dynamic absence of self-interactions is enforced by the action principle, without eliminating the field degrees of freedom. In this context, free local radiation fields are dynamically prohibited. Instead radiation is carried by charge-field functionals of the current which have a negative parity under mathematical time reversal. This leads to the dynamic requirement of a physical time arrow in the equations of motion in order to (...) preserve the overall mathphysical time-reversal symmetry of the formalism. Since this physical time arrow emerges electrodynamically without the need of external thermodynamic or cosmological criteria, it offers a dynamical explanation for the origin of irreversibility in classical electrodynamic measurement processes. “Science, like the arts, admits aesthetic criteria; it seeks theories that display ‘a proper conformity of the parts to one another and to the whole’ while still showing some strangeness in their proportion”—S. Chandrasekar. (shrink)