Lack of specificity around stakeholder identity remains a serious obstacle to the further development of stakeholder theory andits adoption in actual practice by business managers. Nowhere is this shortcoming more evident than in stakeholder theory’s treatment of the constituency known as “community.”In this paper we attempt to set forth what we call “the Problem of Community” as indicative of the definitional problems of stakeholdertheory. We then begin the process of gaining greater specificity around our notions of community and the role (...) of community in stakeholder theory and management. In doing so, we identify the emergence of two fairly new forms of community that we believe are particularly relevant to the stakeholder theorist and practicing manager. These two new variants of community—the virtual advocacy group and the community of practice—extend the notion of community in new directions, which have strikingly different implications for stakeholder theory and practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative Symposium:Conflicting Interests in MedicineLaura Jean Bierut, Sal Cruz-Flores, Laura E. Hodges, Anthony A. Mikulec, Govind K. Nagaldinne, Erine L. Bakanas, John F. Peppin, Joel S. Perlmutter, William H. Seitz Jr., Edward Diao, Andre N. Sofair, and David M. Zientek• To Recruit or Not to Recruit for a Clinical Trial• An Unexpected Lesson• Am I on call for the entire Midwest?• Why is Medicare Wasting Away?• The Downside (...) of the Informed Consent Juggernaut• Expert Testimony at the Food and Drug Administration: Who Wants the Truth?• Crossroads: The Intersection of Personal, Professional Society, and Industry Relationships• A Change of Heart• The Evolution of Conflicts of Interest in a New Subspecialty: A Case Study of the Development of Interventional CardiologyCopyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Michael Bratman''s restricted two-tier approach to rationalizing the stability of intentions contrasts with an alternative view of planning, for which all of the following claims are made: (a) it shares with Bratman''s restricted two-tier approach the virtue of reducing the magnitude of Smart''s problem; (2) it, rather than the unrestricted two-tier approach, is what is argued for in McClennen (1990); (3) there does not appear to be anything in the central analysis that Bratman has provided of plans and intentions (both (...) in his book,Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, and in the article Planning and the Stability of Intention) that precludes his adopting this alternative approach; and (4) it is an approach that neither requires nor encourages any distinction between the standards appropriate to artificial and to human intelligence. (shrink)

Lack of specificity around stakeholder identity remains a serious obstacle to the further development of stakeholder theory and its adoption in actual practice by business managers. Nowhere is this shortcoming more evident than in stakeholder theory’s treatment of the constituency known as “community.”In this paper we attempt to set forth what we call “the Problem of Community” as indicative of the definitional problems of stakeholder theory. We then begin the process of gaining greater specificity around our notions of community and (...) the role of community in stakeholder theory and management. In doing so, we identify the emergence of two fairly new forms of community that we believe are particularly relevant to the stakeholder theorist and practicing manager. These two new variants of community—the virtual advocacy group and the community of practice—extend the notion of community in new directions, which have strikingly different implications for stakeholder theory and practice. (shrink)

BackgroundEthics consult services are well established, but often remain underutilized. Our aim was to identify the barriers and perceptions of the Ethics consult service for physicians, advance practice providers (APPs), and nurses at our urban academic medical center which might contribute to underutilization.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional single-health system, anonymous written online survey, which was developed by the UCSD Health Clinical Ethics Committee and distributed by Survey Monkey. We compare responses between physicians, APPs, and nurses using standard parametric and non-parametric statistical (...) methods. Satisfaction with ethics consult and likelihood of calling Ethics service again were assessed using a 0–100 scale using a 5-likert response structured (0 being “not helpful at all” to 100 being “extremely helpful”) and results presented using box plots and interquartile ranges (IQR).ResultsFrom January to July 2019, approximately 3800 surveys were sent to all physicians, APPs and nurses with a return rate of 5.5—10%. Although the majority of respondents had encountered an ethical dilemma (85–92.1%) only approximately half had ever requested an Ethics consult. The primary reason for physicians never having requested a consult was that they never felt the need for help (41%). For APPs the primary reasons were not knowing an Ethics consult service was available (33.3%) or not knowing how to contact Ethics (27.8%). For nurses, it was not knowing how to contact the Ethics consult service (30.8%) or not feeling the need for help (26.2%). The median satisfaction score (IQR) for Ethics consult services rated on a 0–100 scale, from physicians was 76 (29), for AAPs 89 (49), and nurses 70 (40) (p = 0.62). The median (IQR) of likelihood of consulting Ethics in the future also on a 0–100 scale was 71 (47) for physicians, 69 (45) for APPs, and 61 (45) for nurses (p = 0.79). APP’s and nurses were significantly more likely than physicians to believe that the team did not act on the Ethics consult’s recommendations.ConclusionsBased on the results presented, we were able to identify actionable steps to better engage healthcare providers—and in particular APPs and nurses—and scale up institutional educational efforts to increase awareness of the role of the Ethics consult service at our institution. Actionable steps included implementing a system of ongoing feedback that is critical for the sustainability of the Ethics service role. We hope this project can serve as a blueprint for other hospital-based Ethics consult services to improve the quality of their programs. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to describe a way of teaching business ethics using the creative arts, especially literature and theater. By drawing on these disciplines for both method and texts, we can more easily make the connection to business as a fully human activity, concerned with how meaning is created. Students are encouraged to understand story-telling and narrative and how these tools lend insight into the daily life of businesspeople. The paper describes two main courses, Business Ethics Through (...) Literature and Leadership, Ethics and Theater, and the rationale for each. We begin by suggesting three main leverage points that the courses engender. We then rely on the words of students who have taken the courses for insights into what they learned. We then critically assess some of the principles that have informed course design over time. We conclude by suggesting that paying attention to the creative arts gives rise to a rather different approach to business ethics, one grounded in the pragmatist tradition in philosophy. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

This document is a brief summary of Valentini's paradox and solutions, not all of which are on PhilPapers already.

This paper presents an attempt to solve Laura Valentini’s ideal theory paradox, in a way which makes me think of G.E. Moore but I shall leave the classification of the solution to the experts. I also discuss the claim that philosophy is so easy.

Analytic philosophers nowadays also write histories of their discipline, or some do, but do they do this as one might expect? Much as they sit around discussing some paradox, which they think involves a false conclusion but has premises we find attractive, so you might expect them to start with a mythical history and then explain what is wrong with it. Do they do this? I am not convinced they do. In this paper, I introduce a mythical history of analytic (...) philosophy and journalism relations, in which this happened: era 1, analytic philosophers sought to distinguish themselves from journalists by having short papers requiring LITTLE RESEARCH, which presented clever responses to clever puzzles; era 2, analytic philosophers decided that certain topics could safely be treated more journalistically, because the newspapers do not cover such abstract topics. The paper is written as an imitation of modernist poet, essayist, and fiction writer Laura Riding. I use discussion of the is-ought gap to illustrate my mythical history, but end up unfortunately devaluing Professor Charles Pigden. (shrink)

The dilemma I present for Laura Valentini’s paradox of ideal theory concerns a theory which includes idealizations but also an account of how you apply the theory to less ideal reality. If this does not count as an ideal theory, then theories of justice need not be ideal. If it does, then ideal theories can be action guiding.

This paper offers a solution to Laura Valentini’s paradox of ideal theory. A reason for idealizing assumptions is because otherwise the theory would be too complicated to be action guiding.

A poem by Laura Riding provides a counterexample to Jacques Derrida's claim that speech has been privileged over writing.

The rules in a liberal society should be justifiable to all citizens, or all citizens apart from some extreme cases; or so liberal political philosophers often say, with their usual examples of extreme cases being fascists and religious fundamentalists. But how do you then justify the teaching of poetry in state institutions, such as schools, because there is someone within range for liberal justification who will say this: "There is no objective reason to say that the poetry being taught is (...) better; it is just the curriculum-maker's opinions being forced upon students"? In my paper "Poetry smuggling in a liberal society," I have proposed a solution. This is (a) to NOT have compulsory courses officially teaching poetry, but (b) still teach poetry by having textbooks in other fields which quote poets at the openings of textbook chapters, or even sections within a chapter. (I am not concerned here with teaching poetry composition, by the way; rather with teaching students about already existing poetry.) But I have realized a problem with my proposal. The poetry which most merits textbook quotation may not often be the kind we currently call classics. The Oxfordy canon of poetry in English literature may not be taught, even if other poems of some merit are. To illustrate the problem: consider Andrei Marmor's Philosophy of Law introductory book, which is perhaps only suitable for undergraduates and above but can hopefully illustrate the problem anyway. (The book is flawed in its premise-by-premise reconstruction of Ronald Dworkin and its presentation of Joseph Raz's service conception of authority, as I have observed elsewhere, but I find it the most readable and use it for information and wonder why it is not used at nearby universities. "How are you managing to learn jurisprudence?" "I found a better textbook!" I unsuccessfully proposed Marmor for political theory courses too.) It opens with information about a Californian law requiring that drivers do not use mobile phones while driving. It does not have an opening poem, but I suggest the best for it is this one by Edward Ferri Junior, published on Haikuniverse: Texting driver/ Tarantula fingers/ Flirting with death. Also, from the same publisher, there is Ciarán Parkes: mobile phone/ vibrating on my pillow/ your name in lights. “Who are these poets? Where's Wordsworth and the gang?” ( My volume 1 of best haiku on the Internet does not show up on the Internet searches I have done, by the way. My title quotes a line from poet Laura Riding.). (shrink)

In this paper I make some distinctions, which I hope are of help for Laura Valentini and others. Are the recommendations of a theory of what the government should do possible and are they feasible? Is the project of the theorist possibility-sensitive and is the project feasibility-sensitive?

"Perhaps more than any other scientist of our century, Edward O. Wilson has scrutinized animals in their natural settings, tweezing out the dynamics of their social organization, their relationship with their environments, and their behavior, not only for what it tells us about the animals themselves, but for what it can tell us about human nature and our own behavior. He has brought the fascinating and sometimes surprising results of these studies to general readers through a remarkable collection of books, (...) including The Diversity of Life, The Ants, On Human Nature, and Sociobiology. The grace and precision with which he writes of seemingly complex topics has earned him two Pulitzer prizes, and the admiration of scientists and general readers around the world.In Search of Nature presents for the first time a collection of the seminal short writings of Edward O. Wilson, addressing in brief and eminently readable form the themes that have actively engaged this remarkable intellect throughout his career.""The central theme of the essays is that wild nature and human nature are closely interwoven. I argue that the only way to make complete sense of either is by examining both closely and together as products of evolution.... Human behavior is seen not just as the product of recorded history, ten thousand years recent, but of deep history, the combined genetic and cultural changes that created humanity over hundreds of thousands of years. We need this longer view, I believe, not only to understand our species, but more firmly to secure its future.The book is composed of three sections. ""Animal Nature, Human Nature"" ranges from serpents to sharks to sociality in ants. It asks how and why the universal aversion to snakes might have evolved in humans and primates, marvels at the diversity of the world's 350 species of shark and how their adaptive success has affected our conception of the world, and admonishes us to ""be careful of little lives""-to see in the construction of insect social systems ""another grand experiment in evolution for our delectation.""The Patterns of Nature"" probes at the foundation of sociobiology, asking what is the underlying genetic basis of social behavior, and what that means for the future of the human species. Beginning with altruism and aggression, the two poles of behavior, these essays describe how science, like art, adds new information to the accumulated wisdom, establishing new patterns of explanation and inquiry. In ""The Bird of Paradise: The Hunter and the Poet,"" the analytic and synthetic impulses-exemplified in the sciences and the humanities-are called upon to give full definition to the human prospect.""Nature's Abundance"" celebrates biodiversity, explaining its fundamental importance to the continued existence of humanity. From ""The Little Things That Run the World""-invertebrate species that make life possible for everyone and everything else-to the emergent belief of many scientists in the human species' possible innate affinity for other living things, known as biophilia, Wilson sets forth clear and compelling reasons why humans should concern themselves with species loss. ""Is Humanity Suicidal?"" compares the environmentalist's view with that of the exemptionalist, who holds that since humankind is transcendent in intelligence and spirit, our species must have been released from the iron laws of ecology that bind all other species. Not without optimism, Wilson concludes that we are smart enough and have time enough to avoid an environmental catastrophe of civilization-threatening dimensions-if we are willing both to redirect our science and technology and to reconsider our self-image as a species.In Search of Nature is a lively and accessible introduction to the writings of one of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century. Imaginatively illustrated by noted artist Laura Southworth, it is a book all readers will treasure.". (shrink)

This paper responds to Doctor David Builes’s paper which appeared in the PhilPapers new manuscripts section today: “A Dilemma for Plenitude.” I find what is called the scene setting of the paper puzzling. Consider the view (or claim or thesis) that if a lump has been sculpted into a statue, there are now two things in one place: a lump and a statue. Builes describes this view as narrow (presumably because it is only about a lump and a statue, amongst (...) the many things in this world), so it is rational to generalize if we can, but he aims to argue that the only rational generalization is a view of reality which is too objectionable. I make what seems to me to be an obvious point: I argue that the view is significant even if narrow from a certain perspective, because it challenges the assumption that two physical objects do not occupy the same physical space. (For convenience of exposition, the paper contains an imitation of Laura Riding, which may also be of literary interest.). (shrink)

Professor Timothy Williamson has written a paper addressing the world of jurisprudence as well, entitled "The content of legal evidence." But what should he be saying to jurisprudence, which we can here understand as legal philosophy. Perhaps "saying" is the wrong word. We should speak of checking! He should check that his audiences have a reliable grasp of the premise-inference-conclusion distinction. Let's help any audience members who are not too sure. Here is an example of an argument, with two premises (...) and an inference and a conclusion - prompted by words I actually heard. "(1) If my young children have been taken away to Pakistan without my consent, then my rights have been violated. (2) My young children have been taken away to Pakistan without my consent. Therefore: (3) My rights have been violated." (1) is a premise. (2) is also a premise. The statement above of it ends with "without my consent." The word "therefore" is an inference from these two premises. The conclusion is (3). Given these distinctions, the following representation of the argument is a mistake: "(1) If my young children have been taken away to Pakistan without my consent, then my rights have been violated. (2) My young children have been taken away to Pakistan without my consent. (3) Therefore, my rights have been violated." (3) is supposed to be the conclusion, but here it also includes the inference - the therefore! But this mistake is not uncommon in various circles (I have not been collecting published examples, sorry) and suggests to me a poor “grasp” of the distinctions between premises and inference and conclusion. Probably there is a paper in the nineteenth century regarding what disasters arise by not separating out the inference. But probably also you intuitively grasp the distinction, even if you are not disposed to write in line with it. If I ask you, what follows from premises (1) and (2), you will say (or at least think): my rights have been violated. If I ask you, what conclusion can you draw from premises (1) and (2) - assuming they are true - you will say (or at least think): my rights have been violated. If I ask you, what can you infer from premises (1) and (2) - assuming they are true - you will say (or at least think): my rights have been violated. In answering in this way, you don't include the inference in your answer: the answer being your specification of the conclusion. Including it is like saying "Therefore therefore..." If I draw attention to these two premises and say, "Therefore" you just think the conclusion as what follows. Hopefully! (The title I have given to this contribution quotes a poem by Laura Riding entitled "The World and I."). (shrink)

My title quotes from memory the opening stanza of a poem by Laura Riding, entitled Dimensions, from her early poetry, 1920-26. It is in First Awakenings, edited by Elizabeth Friedmann, Alan J. Clark and Robert Nye. (The “assistant psychiatrist” in North Manchester General Hospital, September to mid-November 2023, was referred to as Nye. I tried to figure out which literary figure each staff member corresponded to, and he was worried about that. I did genuinely wonder whether there is a (...) code and if I figure it out, they would let me out of here. Is it even insane to try everything, under such restricted liberty and not much to do? By the way, I asked a madman if he knew Wyndham Lewis and he nodded.) Anyway, do you know John Rawls's famous cake cutting thought experiment, or model or outline of a model? All individuals at the party want as much cake as possible. You give the knife to the person who gets the last piece left and he/she cuts the cake equally, says Rawls, so as to prevent getting a smaller piece. I was thinking to code this, but I was lazy (unsurprisingly). Here is some BASIC code: works on GWBASIC I believe and QBASIC. I have used semicolon for a line break in the code; just press enter instead within the BASIC interpreter. (I use Rufus to put DOS on a memory stick, by the way.) 10 PRINT "It's a 2 dimensional cake, okay." 20 PRINT "One pixel vertically." 30 INPUT "How many people want some cake (whole number only)? ", NE; 40 IF NE > 1 THEN GOTO 70; 50 PRINT "Enter 1 or above"; 60 GOTO 30; 70 INPUT "What is the cake horizontally? How many pixels (whole number only)? ", H; 80 IF H > 0 THEN GOTO 110; 90 PRINT "Enter 1 or above"; 100 GOTO 70; 110 X1 = H/NE; 120 X2 = INT (H/NE); 130 IF X1 = X2 THEN GOTO 160; 140 PRINT "Cake size is not a good idea."; 150 GOTO 70; 160 PRINT "Each cake piece is this number of pixels horizontally: ", X1. (shrink)

MODERNIST JOURNALS EXPERT (MJE): You have published in poetry and you have published in philosophy in unranked journals and you have been rejected in philosophy by ranked ones. What have you learnt? ME: Learnt? Am I one who learns? Or one who learns before two world wars. I must not be that talented then. MJE: What have you learnt? ME: After I was released from hospital in November 2023, I decided to focus on publishing poetry. I submitted a number of (...) poems to poetry journals, by my standards. (By the way, I had tried to publish poetry in 2021 as well.) I submitted poems of mine I liked and I came to this conclusion after a year: if a journal does not publish poems that you the poet likes, then they are not going to publish you (assuming you submit poems that you like yourself). MJE: Anything else? ME: I looked up lists of poetry journals, especially for short poetry. But I found that you can also discover poetry journals (or magazines) like this: you think up a name for a poetry magazine, or part of one, and just put it into a search engine and a poetry journal comes up. I tried some of these. I put in Moon poetry into Google and I found Waxing & Waning. MJE: That's interesting. What about blind review or not? ME: I have not found any poetry journals with blind review. MJE: Is the poetry journal system less fair? ME: Well, I got published with minimal background in poetry. In the University of Manchester, we have anonymous marking (like blind review), but when I was there you could look up who the student was from the number on the script. MJE: Do you think that happened when you got rejected by Analysis? The reviewer looked up who the author is. ME: No idea. I'm not paranoid. In my paper, "The rationality of Martha Nussbaum's University" I point out that certain lecturers are in a precarious position and maybe blind review helps them slightly. BUT it does not produce the kind of results I would expect. When I was an editor for the journal Philosophical Pathways, I did not have blind review and I published what I liked, and there were people from all over the world. Who are these people? I don't know. But that journal shut down. MJE: Yes. How many journals have you shut down already? We have seen tastes LIKE yours before. They are in short-lived modernist literary journals. These journals are good and you can read them today, but you end up publishing people who hate your modernist project, such as Richard Aldington in The Egoist. Also they are very stressful to run. How many hours did you sleep yesterday? ME: I sleep when I want. MJE: How many hours? What time do you call this? ME: I slept in the afternoon and then a long sleep in the night and morning. MJE: You need to sleep less and write a lot more. ME: What if I go mad? MJE: Laura Riding, whom you know something about, jumped out of a window and damaged her spine. Virginia Woolf, who knew high level philosophers and whose father was a literary history expert, nevertheless worked till she hallucinated: the best network was not enough. And look: her essay on cinema is billions of times better than your essay on her yesterday. Maria Tsvetaeva was forced to suicide. These people are of course out of your league, but there are countless minor cases and you stand a chance against them. But you sleep all day. ME: What should I do? MJE: Do whatever I tell you or you will fail. ME: And what do you tell me? MJE: Write more and stop writing on Rawls. If Martha Nussbaum gave up, there has to be a major problem. This person does not give up on a largely sound system. ME But I want to say more things about Rawls and everyone says he is the best. (shrink)

I present two senses in which a political philosophy may be an ideal theory. They are not identified by Laura Valentini, in her much-cited paper. The paper is written as a pastiche of the writing style of the distinguished legal and political philosopher Joseph Raz, who recently passed away, with my notes at the foot of the page within square brackets.

The aim of UK-REACH (“The United Kingdom Research study into Ethnicity And COVID-19 outcomes in Healthcare workers”) is to understand if, how, and why healthcare workers (HCWs) in the United Kingdom (UK) from ethnic minority groups are at increased risk of poor outcomes from COVID-19. In this article, we present findings from the ethical and legal stream of the study, which undertook qualitative research seeking to understand and address legal, ethical, and social acceptability issues around data protection, privacy, and information (...) governance associated with the linkage of HCWs’ registration data and healthcare data. We interviewed 22 key opinion leaders in healthcare and health research from across the UK in two-to-one semi-structured interviews. Transcripts were coded using qualitative thematic analysis. Participants told us that a significant aspect of Big Data research in public health is varying drivers of mistrust—of the research itself, research staff and funders, and broader concerns of mistrust within participant communities, particularly in the context of COVID-19 and those situated in more marginalised community settings. However, despite the challenges, participants also identified ways in which legally compliant and ethically informed approaches to research can be crafted to mitigate or overcome mistrust and establish greater confidence in Big Data public health research. Overall, our research indicates that a “Big Data Ethics by Design” approach to research in this area can help assure (1) that meaningful community and participant engagement is taking place and that extant challenges are addressed, and (2) that any new challenges or hitherto unknown unknowns can be rapidly and properly considered to ensure potential (but material) harms are identified and minimised where necessary. Our findings indicate such an approach, in turn, will help drive better scientific breakthroughs that translate into medical innovations and effective public health interventions, which benefit the publics studied, including those who are often marginalised in research. (shrink)