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206Reviewing academic books: are there ethical issues?Journal of Information Ethics 11 (1): 57-65. 2002.The process of deciding which books academics submit should be published favors authors who are associated with the most prestigious universities and other research institutions. Some feel this bias could be minimized if the review of academic books were carried out as anonymously as is the review of articles for journal publication. Not likely to happen soon, however, because both academic and publishing industries promote the hierarchy of perceived excellence that permeates the process of pu…Read more
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206Obituary of an American philosopher born in Latvia. Family fled Russians, migrated to Milwaukee. John became first non-identical twin to receive a kidney transplant, wrote about new technology.
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164Displaced Workers: Whose Responsibility?Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy 6 74-87. 1984.As a way of identifying factors that come into play in determining responsibility for displaced workers, author reviews a number of well known arguments for or against responsibility on the part of diverse actors in society. Key figures in this search for responsibility are corporations, unions, and government. No definitive responsibility is asserted.
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247Business-Inflicted Social HarmIn Yeager Hudson (ed.), Technology, Morality, and Social Policy, Edwin Mellen Press. pp. 55-73. 1998.Businesses cause social harm, meaning harm to society at large and not just to those with whom a business is contractually linked. Evidence introduced: normative claims that businesses should be "socially responsible"; positive claims that they contribute to social well-being; and negative claims that they are sometimes military-like, causing extensive harm for which no one is held personally responsible. The latter point to corporate survivalism, which acknowledges no mandatory civil respons…Read more
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248The Post-9/11 State of Emergency: Reality versus RhetoricSocial Philosophy Today 19 193-215. 2004.After the 9/11 attacks the U.S. administration went beyond emergency response towards imperialism, but cloaked its agenda in the rhetoric of fighting ‘terrorists’ and ‘terrorism.’ After distinguishing between emergency thinking and emergency planning, I question the administration’s “war on terrorism” rhetoric in three stages. First, upon examining the post-9/11 antiterrorism discourse I find that it splits into two agendas: domestic, protect our infrastructure; and foreign, select military targ…Read more
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218The Compensatory Rights of Emerging Interest GroupsSocial Philosophy Today 8 397-416. 1993.Author argues that an emerging interest group, especially one that seeks to reverse past discrimination against its predecessors in the public arena, is entitled to enhanced consideration as a means of achieving long denied but merited rights. First this thesis is defended by identifying both practical need and theoretical support for emerging interest groups. Then these findings are applied specifically to the rights of women as an emerging interest group. (Publisher left off last word of tit…Read more
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63Probability and Opinion: A Study in the Medieval Presuppositions of Post-Medieval Theories of Probability (edited book)Martinus Nijhoff. 1968.Recognizing that probability (the Greek doxa) was understood in pre-modern theories as the polar opposite of certainty (episteme), the author of this study elaborates the forms which these polar opposites have taken in some twentieth century writers and then, in greater detail, in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Profiting from subsequent more sophisticated theories of probability, he examines how Aquinas’s judgments about everything from God to gossip depend on schematizations of the polarity b…Read more
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3Human being and being humanAppleton-Century-Crofts. 1969.A textbook intended for undergraduates. Develops an overview of approaches to the philosophy of man (human beings) by presenting representative examples of major areas of emphasis. Drawing on the social sciences as well as philosophical works, the book presents the human phenomenon as a product of both heredity and environment (the "facticity" of man) and a source of new realities (the "transcendence" of man). Considered under the heading of man's facticity are aspects of corporeality and con…Read more
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193Controlling Technology: Contemporary Issues, edited by William B. Thompson (review)Teaching Philosophy 17 (2): 185-188. 1994.
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348Building community into propertyJournal of Business Ethics 7 (3). 1988.American business's fascination with both laborsaving devices and low wage environments is causing not only structural unemployment and dissipation of the nation's industrial base but also the deterioration of abandoned host communities. According to individualist understandings of the right of private property, this deterioration is beyond sanction except insofar as it affects the property rights of others. But corporate stockholders and managers should not be considered the only owners of prop…Read more
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161The Philosophical Challenge of September 11, edited by Tom Rockmore, Joseph Margolis, and Armen T. Marsoobian (review)Teaching Philosophy 29 (3): 269-271. 2006.The events of September 11, 2001, have challenged many disciplines and professions, but have they really engendered a philosophical challenge? The title of this book suggests they have, and if so one would expect its contribution to show how the violence perpetrated that day and in its aftermath has challenged philosophy. In fact, few of the otherwise interesting essays do this very clearly.
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364Technology and Human ExistenceSouthwestern Journal of Philosophy 10 (1): 55-69. 1979.Can humans exist without machines? Yes, in principle; but not in the numbers or in the manner to which they have become accustomed. However, the quality of machine-intensive existence is directly proportional to the degree of humans' control over their technology. Such control they can exercise, if at all, only by controlling the corporations from which technologies emanate. This can't be achieved by individuals acting in isolation but requires collective cooperation, e.g., in the form of wo…Read more
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270Review Article: Just War Theory and Peace Studies (review)Teaching Philosophy 32 (3): 297-304. 2009.Scholarly critiques of the just war tradition have grown in number and sophistication in recent years to the point that available publications now provide the basis for a more philosophically challenging Peace Studies course. Focusing on just a few works published in the past several years, this review explores how professional philosophers are reclaiming the terrain long dominated by the approach of political scientist Michael Walzer. On center stage are British philosopher David Rodin’s critiq…Read more
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294Displaced Workers: America's Unpaid DebtJournal of Business Ethics 4 (1). 1985.The U.S. doctrine of employment-at-will, modified legislatively for protected groups, is being less harshly applied to managerial personnel. Comparable compensation is not otherwise available in the U.S. to workers displaced by technology. Nine pairs of arguments are presented to show how fundamentally management and labor disagree about a company's responsibility for its former employees. These arguments, born of years of labor-management debate, are kaleidoscopic claims about which side has wh…Read more
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395Can Arms Be Sold Responsibly in the Global Market?Social Philosophy Today 23 103-114. 2007.Corporate social responsibility (CSR) research has ignored the arms industry, in large part because of political assumptions that tie this industry to nation-state sovereignty. Bypassing this obsolescent Westphalian world-view, I examine the US arms industry on the basis of CSR requirements regarding the environment, social equity, profitability, and use of political power. I find the arms industry fails each of these four CSR requirements. In response to the assertion that the arms industry sho…Read more
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256The Two-Tiered Ethics of EDPJournal of Business Ethics 14 (1): 53-61. 1995.Ethical questions regarding access to and use of electronically generated data are (if asked) commonly resolved by distinguishing in Lockean fashion between raw (unworked) and refined (worked) data. The former is thought to belong to no one, the latter to the collector and those to whom the collector grants access. Comparative power separates free riders from rightful owners. The resulting two-tiered ethics of access is here challenged on the grounds that it inequitably establishes a rule of law…Read more
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1234Assessing arms makers' corporate social responsibilityJournal of Business Ethics 74 (3). 2007.Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a focal point for research aimed at extending business ethics to extra-corporate issues; and as a result many companies now seek to at least appear dedicated to one or another version of CSR. This has not affected the arms industry, however. For, this industry has not been discussed in CSR literature, perhaps because few CSR scholars have questioned this industry's privileged status as an instrument of national sovereignty. But major changes in th…Read more
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309The depersonalization of violence: Reflections on the future of personal responsibilityJournal of Value Inquiry 7 (3): 161-172. 1973.The intent of this article is to discredit the much used concept (often unstated) of virtuous violence. To begin with, it is a paradox hence in need of not easily achieved justification. Here author's critique focuses on the political myth of prophetic righteousness, the ethical myth of a common good, and the myth of the infinite, which is utilized all too often to bypass finite systems. (Article sharply criticized when first presented to a faculty group.)
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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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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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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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1015Business 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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384The 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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228Leave 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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285Ethical Aspects of Information Technology, by Richard A. Spinello (review)Teaching Philosophy 21 (2): 198-200. 1988.
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268Commentary 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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1576The 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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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 |