World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams.JamesEdward John Altham &Ross Harrison (eds.) -1995 - New York: Cambridge University Press.detailsBernard Williams is one of the most influential figures in ethical theory, where he has set a considerable part of the current agenda. In this collection a distinguished international team of philosophers who have been stimulated by Williams's work give responses to it. The topics covered include equality; consistency; comparisons between science and ethics; integrity; moral reasons; the moral system; and moral knowledge. Williams himself provides a substantial reply, which shows both the directions of his own thought and also his (...) present view of earlier work of his which has been extensively discussed for twenty years. This volume will be indispensable reading for all those interested in ethical theory. (shrink)
Reporting of informed consent, standard of care and post-trial obligations in global randomized intervention trials: A systematic survey of registered trials.Emma R. M. Cohen,Jennifer M. O'neill,Michel Joffres,Ross E. G. Upshur &Edward Mills -2008 -Developing World Bioethics 9 (2):74-80.detailsObjective: Ethical guidelines are designed to ensure benefits, protection and respect of participants in clinical research. Clinical trials must now be registered on open-access databases and provide details on ethical considerations. This systematic survey aimed to determine the extent to which recently registered clinical trials report the use of standard of care and post-trial obligations in trial registries, and whether trial characteristics vary according to setting. Methods: We selected global randomized trials registered on http://www.clinicaltrials.gov and http://www.controlled-trials.com. We searched for intervention (...) trials of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis from 9 October 2004, the date of the most recent version of the Helsinki Declaration, to 10 April 2007. Results: We collected data from 312 trials. Fifty-eight percent (58%, 95% CI = 53 to 64) of trial protocols report informed consent. Fifty-eight percent (58%, 95% CI = 53 to 64) of trials report active controls. Almost no trials (1%, 95% CI = 0.5 to 3) mention post-trial provisions. Most trials measure surrogate outcomes. Twenty percent (20%, 95% CI = 16 to 25) of trials measure patient-important outcomes, such as death; and the odds that these outcomes are in a low income country are five times greater than for a developed country (odds ratio (OR) 5.03, 95% CI = 2.70 to 9.35, p =< 0.001). Pharmaceutical companies are involved in 28% (CI = 23 to 33) of trials and measure surrogate outcomes more often than nonpharmaceutical companies (OR 2.45, 95% CI = 1.18 to 5.09, p = 0.31). Conclusion: We found a large discrepancy in the quality of reporting and approaches used in trials in developing settings compared to wealthier settings. (shrink)
Identity, Morality, and Threat: Studies in Violent Conflict.David G. Alpher,Sandra I. Cheldelin,Rom Harre,S. Ayse Kadayifici-Orellana,Joseph V. Montville,Marc H.Ross,Dennis J. D. Sandole,Peter N. Stearns,Lena Tan &Edward A. Tiryakian (eds.) -2006 - Lexington Books.detailsIdentity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Daniel Rothbart and Karyna Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other.
Kripke,Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought.Edward Feser -2013 -American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 87 (1):1-32.detailsJamesRoss developed a simple and powerful argument for the immateriality of the intellect, an argument rooted in the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition while drawing on ideas from analytic philosophers Saul Kripke, W. V. Quine, and Nelson Goodman. This paper provides a detailed exposition and defense of the argument, filling out aspects thatRoss left sketchy. In particular, it elucidates the argument’s relationship to its Aristotelian-Scholastic and analytic antecedents, and to Kripke’s work especially; and it responds to objections or potential (...) objections to be found in the work of contemporary writers like Peter Dillard, Robert Pasnau, Brian Leftow, and Paul Churchland. (shrink)
A criticism ofRoss's hypothetical 'I can'.Rem B. Edwards -1960 -Mind 69 (273):80-83.detailsThis article argues that the hypothetical 'I Can' position of Sir DavidRoss is incompatible with his determinism.
Justifying Cyber-intelligence?Ross W. Bellaby -2016 -Journal of Military Ethics 15 (4):299-319.detailsThe surge in threats aided by or carried out through cyberspace has placed significant pressure on the intelligence community to adapt or leave itself open to attack. Indeed, many in both political and intelligence circles argue for access to ever greater amounts of cyber information in order to catch potential threats before they become real. By collecting all our digital information, the intelligence community argues that it is not only able to detail what people have done or are currently doing (...) but also predict what their next move might be. However, the ethical implications are unclear and the backlash followingEdward Snowden’s revelations have shown that such activities are not without controversy. This leaves the debate stuck between the important, ethical role that intelligence can play and the potential for its unrestrained use to cause undue harm. This paper will resolve this by giving greater detail to cyber-intelligence practices, highlighting the different levels of harm that the various intelligence operations can cause. The essence of this paper is not that cyber-intelligence should be banned outright, but that it can be justified given the necessary circumstances. Therefore, the paper will develop a specialised set of Just Cyber-Intelligence Principles, built on the just war tradition, to outline if and when such activities are justified. (shrink)
No categories
Freedom, responsibility and obligation.Rem Blanchard Edwards -1970 - The Hague,: M. Nijhoff.detailsThis work is conceived as a modem study of the relationships of the concept of human freedom with the moral concepts of responsibility and obligation and other closely allied notions. One pitfall into which writers on my sub jects have occasionally fallen has been that of spending too much time in critically examining positions and arguments which no sane philosopher has ever offered. In order to guard against the danger of debating with "straw men," I have attempted to engage in (...) critical conversations with several twentieth century writers on my theme. I have attempted to pay special at tention to a handful of writers who have written extremely important and influential discussions and who are representatives of a diversity of per spectives on the issues involved. In particular, I have taken note of the work of two determinists, Sir DavidRoss and Hastings Rashdall, a libertarian, C. A. Campbell, and a reprel>entative of the more recent linguistic-analytic approach, P. Nowell-Smith. Many other important writers have been brought in at crucial points in the conversation. But this is not a history of the problem in the 20th century. Rather, it is a critical, systematic study of a problem or set of related problems. This work may be divided roughly into two parts, a metaphysical-psycho logical part comprising the first three chapters, and a metaethical-ethical part consisting of the last three chapters. (shrink)
On a Rawls specialist’s review of T.H. Irwin’s history of Western ethics.Terence RajivanEdward -manuscriptdetailsShould one read T.H. Irwin’s three volume history of Western ethics, or parts of it? Here one might turn to reviews. The journal The Philosophical Forum uses the sensible strategy of getting different specialists to review different parts of the book. There are two chapters on Rawls, each one reviewed by a Rawlsian. I wish to register discontent with StevenRoss’s review.
Review essay/the politics of torture.JamesRoss Sweeney -1987 -Criminal Justice Ethics 6 (2):60-66.detailsEdward Peters, Torture Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985, viii + 202 pp.
Expectancy Effects in Reconstructive Memory: When the Past is Just What We Expected.Keith Markman,Edward Hirt &Hugh McDonald -1998 - In Steven Jay Lynn & Kevin M. McConkey,Truth in Memory. Guilford Press. pp. 62-89.detailsTopics include sources of schematic effects on memory; the M.Ross and M. Conway model; E. R. Hirt's model of reconstructive memory; and moderators of the relative weighting of expectancy vs memory trace.
Chronometers on the arctic expeditions of JohnRoss and WilliamEdward Parry: With notes on a letter from Messrs. William Prkinson & William James Frodsham.Trevor H. Levere -1994 -Annals of Science 51 (2):165-175.detailsThe search for the Northwest Passage in the years following the Napoleonic Wars provided both a market and testing ground for marine chronometers. Long voyages and extreme temperatures challenged the best chronometers. Among the firms seeking to meet those challenges was that of William Parkinson & William James Frodsham. Their chronometers performed particularly well in the Arctic, as John and James ClarkRoss, WilliamEdward Parry, andEdward Sabine gladly recognized. The way in which chronometers were made (...) and sold, however, meant that there were sometimes controversies over who was entitled to claim credit for a particular instrument. A letter from Parkinson & Frodsham in 1821 illustrates the problem, and its causes in the nature of the trade; the text of that letter is published here in its entirety. Also problematic, and discussed here, was the craft aspect of the industry, in which the ‘mechanical construction’ of a chronometer might not reveal the process of manufacture that gave it its steady rate and accuracy. (shrink)
Ross Revisited: Reply to Feser.Peter Dillard -2014 -American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88 (1):139-147.detailsDrawing upon Saul Kripke’s discussion of rules, James F.Ross deduces the immateriality of thinking from the metaphysical determinacy of thinking and the metaphysical indeterminacy of any physical process. It has been objected thatRoss does not establish the metaphysical indeterminacy of what function a physical process realizes, thatRoss does not show the incoherence of a highly deflationary view of our talk about thinking, and thatRoss opens up an unbridgeable gulf between sui generis thinking (...) and behavior.Edward Feser has recently defendedRoss’s argument from these objections. The present paper explains whyRoss’s argument remains vulnerable to all three objections. (shrink)
Edward Frankland and the Cheapside chemists of Lancaster: an early Victorian pharmaceutical apprenticeship.Colin A. Russell -1978 -Annals of Science 35 (3):253-273.detailsThis paper attempts a critical examination of the thesis that an apprenticeship to a Lancaster druggist was, forEdward Frankland, a wholly inappropriate preparation for a career in chemistry. This view, which stems directly from Frankland himself, is defective in several ways. It fails to take into account certain benefits which he accepted as valuable; it implies an exceptional degree of ‘negligence’ which was in fact quite typical; it ignores certain positive indicators of the value of such experience; and (...) it involves questionable value-judgments on the behaviour of one individual, the druggist StephenRoss. Although Frankland's perspective may be no longer acceptable, the reasons for its inadequacy are perhaps the most important aspect of the whole affair. Their identification raises questions of historiography of wider significance, while the whole episode underlines certain issues in scientific training that were to become crucial in the growth of Victorian chemistry in Britain. (shrink)
Lying: The Impact of Decision Context.William T.Ross &Diana C. Robertson -2000 -Business Ethics Quarterly 10 (2):409-440.detailsAbstract:This study tests the usefulness of a person-situation interactionist framework in examining the willingness of a salesperson to lie to get an order. Using a survey of 389 salespersons, our results demonstrate that organizational relationships influence willingness to lie. Specifically, salespersons are less willing to lie to their own company than to their customer, than to a channel partner, and finally, than to a competitor firm. Furthermore, respondents from firms with a clear and positive ethical climate are less willing to (...) lie. Finally, our study finds that interactions between personality factors, such as high Machiavellianism and high self-monitoring, and situational factors have an impact on willingness to lie. Our results suggest that firms can take steps to influence employee ethical behavior. (shrink)
Determination Relations and Metaphysical Explanations.Maşuk Şimşek -forthcoming -Dialectica.detailsRoss Cameron (2022) argues that metaphysical infinitists should reject the generally accepted idea that metaphysical determination relations back metaphysical explanations. Otherwise it won’t be possible for them to come up with successful explanations for the existence of dependent entities in non-wellfounded chains of dependence. I argue that his argument suffers from what he calls the finitist dogma, although indirectly so. However, there is a better way of motivating Cameron’s conclusion. Assuming Cameron’s principle of Essence, explanations for the existence of (...) dependent entities turn out to be circular if determination relations back explanations. This latter argument provides a stronger case as it puts the foundationalist under significant pressure, besides putting the infinitist under some pressure, to deny the idea that determination relations back explanations. (shrink)
The grammar of consciousness: an exploration of tacit knowing.Edward Moss -1995 - New York: St. Martin's Press.detailsBeginning from the scientist-philosopher Michael Polanyi's theory of tacit knowing, and drawing upon a remarkably original model of the mind and its workings,Edward Moss develops the thesis that all consciousness is grammatically structured. Comparison is made in detail with the theories of Daniel Dennett, based on the computer analogy, and with the neurophysiological theories of Gerald Edelman. It is suggested that Moss's top-down psychological model can be integrated with Edelman's bottom-up analysis. Two final chapters explore the philosophical implications (...) of this discussion. (shrink)
What the Mind-Independence of Color Requires.PeterRoss -2017 - In Marcos Silva,How Colours Matter to Philosophy. Cham: Springer. pp. 137-158.detailsThe early modern distinction between primary and secondary qualities continues to have a significant impact on the debate about the nature of color. An aspect of this distinction that is still influential is the idea that the mind-independence of color requires that it is a primary quality. Thus, using shape as a paradigm example of a primary quality, a longstanding strategy for determining whether color is mind-independent is to consider whether it is sufficiently similar to shape to be a primary (...) quality. However, I’ll argue that the idea that the mind-independence of color requires that it is a primary quality is mistaken, and that, to the contrary, while color is not a primary quality, it is mind-independent. I’ll propose an alternative understanding of what the mind-independence of color requires. This alternative models color perception on an information filter. According to this model, mental qualities that I’ll call media qualities are involved in color perception. The involvement of mental qualities suggests mind-independence. However, I’ll argue, their involvement is modeled after the qualities of a kind of filter that provides access to, but does not constitute, filtered qualities. (shrink)
Existential America.George Cotkin -2003 - Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.detailsEurope's leading existential thinkers -- Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus -- all felt that Americans were too self-confident and shallow to accept their philosophy of responsibility, choice, and the absurd. "There is no pessimism in America regarding human nature and social organization," Sartre remarked in 1950, while Beauvoir wrote that Americans had no "feeling for sin and for remorse" and Camus derided American materialism and optimism. Existentialism, however, enjoyed rapid, widespread, and enduring popularity among Americans. No less (...) than their European counterparts, American intellectuals participated in the conversation of existentialism. In Existential America , historian George Cotkin argues that the existential approach to life, marked by vexing despair and dauntless commitment in the face of uncertainty, has deep American roots and helps to define the United States in the twentieth-century in ways that have never been fully realized or appreciated. As Cotkin shows, not only did Americans readily take to existentialism, but they were already heirs to a rich tradition of thinkers -- from Jonathan Edwards and Herman Melville to EmilyDickinson and William James -- who had wrestled with the problems of existence and the contingency of the world long before Sartre and his colleagues. After introducing this concept of an American existential tradition, Cotkin examines how formal existentialism first arrived in America in the 1930s through discussion of Kierkegaard and the early vogue among New York intellectuals for the works of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus. Cotkin then traces the evolution of existentialism in America: its adoption by Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison to help articulate the African-American experience its expression in the works of Norman Mailer and photographer Robert Frank its incorporation into the tenets of the feminist and radical student movements of the 1960s and its lingering presence in contemporary American thought and popular culture, particularly in such films as Crimes and Misdemeanors , Fight Club and American Beauty . The only full-length study of existentialism in America, this highly engaging and original work provides an invaluable guide to the history of American culture since the end of the Second World War. (shrink)
The Structure of Musical Revolutions.Edward Slowik -2007 -Philosophy Now 59:9-11.detailsThis essay constructs a non-scientific analogy that can help to explain the nature and purpose of Kuhn's philosophical concepts, especially his notion of a scientific "paradigm". The non-scientific topic that is employed to achieve this result is the history of musical styles and the structure of musical compositions.