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243Review of Praying for a Cure: When Medical and Religious Practices Conflict, by Peggy DesAutels, Margaret P. Battin, and Larry May (review)Teaching Philosophy 25 (1): 75-77. 2002.
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341Death and Aging in Technopolis: Towards a Role Definition of WisdomJournal of Value Inquiry 10 (3): 161-177. 1976.In this paper I will argue that our own society's philosophy of death and dying has a largely negative effect on public policies towards the elderly, and that these policies will be changed for the better when and if we come to appreciate our elderly as the principal sources of our collective wisdom. Towards these ends, I shall consider in turn some basic types of theories about death, some basic attitudes towards dying and the duration of dying, some models of aging as they affect and/or embody…Read more
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159The Philosopher's Voice: Philosophy, Politics, and Language in the Nineteenth Century, by Andrew Fiala (review)Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18 (4): 333-335. 2004.A positive review of a book about four nineteenth century German philosophers (Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx) who sought to use philosophy to effect political change. To this end they each decided whom to address and how. Their objective: enhance freedom and/or enlightenment. Final topic: the relevance of these writers and their agenda to contemporary philosophy.
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1008Business ethics: A helpful hybrid in search of integrityJournal of Business Ethics 37 (2). 2002.What sort of connection is there between business ethics and philosophy? The answer given here: a weak one, but it may be getting stronger. Comparatively few business ethics articles are structurally dependent on mainstream academic philosophy or on such sub-specialities thereof as normative ethics, moral theory, and social and political philosophy. Examining articles recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics that declare some dependence, the author finds that such declarations often …Read more
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377The planned obsolescence of the humanities: Is it unethical?Journal of Academic Ethics 5 (2-4): 141-152. 2007.The humanities have not enjoyed preeminence in academe since the Scientific Revolution marginalized the old trivium. But they long continued to play a subordinate educational role by helping constitute the distinguishing culture of the elite. Now even this subordinate role is becoming expendable as devotees of the profit motive seek to reduce culture to technological delivery of cultural products (Noble, Digital diploma mills: The automation of higher education, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2…Read more
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203Terrorism and International Justice, edited by James P. Sterba (review)Teaching Philosophy 27 (2): 181-184. 2004.
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227Leave No Oil Reserves Behind, Including Iraq’s: The Geopolitics of American ImperialismRadical Philosophy Today 2006 39-54. 2006.Just war theory needs to become a real-time critique of government war propaganda in order to facilitate peace advocacy ante bellum. This involves countering asserted justificatory reasons with demonstrable facts that reveal other motives, thereby yielding reflective understanding which can be collectivized via electronic media. As a case in point, I compare here the publicly declared reasons for the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq in 2003 with reasons discussed internally months and even years befor…Read more
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278Ethical Aspects of Information Technology, by Richard A. Spinello (review)Teaching Philosophy 21 (2): 198-200. 1988.
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267Commentary on Lawrence Blum's "I'm Not a Racist, But...": The Moral Quandary of Race (review)Social Philosophy Today 19 239-241. 2004.A complimentary assessment of Blum's award-winning book about racism and its affects. Well written as it is, it needs to be supplemented with a definition of racial injustice, and also to analyze racism not only on the level of individual morality but from a human rights perspective that discredits political and economic motives for racism (e.g., by drawing on Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism).
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1571The U.S. Military-Industrial Complex is Circumstantially UnethicalJournal of Business Ethics 95 (2). 2010.Business ethicists should examine not only business practices but whether a particular type of business is even prima facie ethical. To illustrate how this might be done I here examine the contemporary U.S. defense industry. In the past the U.S. military has engaged in missions that arguably satisfied the just war self-defense rationale, thereby implying that its suppliers of equipment and services were ethical as well. Some recent U.S. military missions, however, arguably fail the self-defense …Read more
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329After “Mental Illness” What? A Philosophical Endorsement of Statutory ReformBowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy 2 122-131. 1980.This article argues in favor of modifying the medical model of severe psychiatric disturbances that underlies calling them "mental illness." The key reason for this proposal is that numerous specialists other than physicians as well as non-specialists contribute to the process of assisting a person recover from what the author suggests might better be called "extraordinary functional disability." There is little uniformity in existing definitions under state laws, but all involve three types of …Read more
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479Towards Enforceable Bans on Illicit Businesses: From Moral Relativism to Human RightsJournal of Business Ethics 119 (1): 119-130. 2014.Many scholars and activists favor banning illicit businesses, especially given that such businesses constitute a large part of the global economy. But these businesses are commonly operated as if they are subject only to the ethical norms their management chooses to recognize, and as a result they sometimes harm innocent people. This can happen in part because there are no effective legal constraints on illicit businesses, and in part because it seems theoretically impossible to dispose definiti…Read more
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297Public goods and the paying publicJournal of Business Ethics 14 (2). 1995.This paper proposes a way to undercut anarchist objections to taxation without endorsing an authoritarian justification of government coercion. The argument involves public goods, as understood by economists and others. But I do not analyse options of autonomous prisoners and the like; for, however useful otherwise, these abstractions underestimate the real-world task of sorting out the prerogatives of and limits on ownership. Proceeding more contextually, I come to recommend a shareholder adden…Read more
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Indiana University Purdue University, IndianapolisDepartment of Philosophy
Philanthropic StudiesRetired faculty
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Professional Ethics |
Business Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Just War Theory |