Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Cheating Resistant Pedagogies: Applying Insights From “Cheating Lessons” In The Classroom, Martha Reineke, Kim Baker, Lisa Brodersen, Timothy Adamson

Ethics Conference

Our panel discussion will focus on James Lang’s Cheating Lessons. Our goal is to capture the attention of any faculty members who suffer from plagiarism fatigue and think that everything that can be said about cheating in higher education has already been said. Our presentation will demonstrate that Lang breaks new ground. He draws on case studies of cheating, but not primarily to teach his readers about why students plagiarize or commit other academic ethics infractions. Rather, Lang invites his readers to treat each case as a distinct lesson in how students learn. Focusing on contextual rather than dispositional factors …

Applying The Model Of Human Occupation In The Development Of Consistent Ethical Behavior, Cindy Hahn, Margo Kreger

Ethics Conference

Health care education programs are struggling in preparing future graduates for ethical practice. Students need to not only develop a better understand ethics, but also value them and learn to self-evaluate their progress in becoming ethical practitioners. To this end, educators need to imbed ethics into all classes and allow for consistent skill practice. Incorporating “habitual” practice can support later consistent skill performance. According to the Model of Human Occupation (MOHO) developed by researcher and occupational therapist, Dr. Gary Kielhofner, “habituation is an internalized readiness to exhibit consistent patterns of behavior guided by our habits and roles and fitted to …

Crafting Research Writing Assignments That Emphasize Scholarly Integrity, Jessica Schreyer

Ethics Conference

This presentation will share pedagogical practices for a research writing assignment that emphasizes the development of an ethic of scholarly integrity. Geared for first-year students, the assignment is embedded in a unit on research writing that is designed to helping students understand the research and writing process. Many students are novice researchers, therefore guidance on appropriate citation and the reason for such citation is needed. In addition, students learn about how maintaining detailed records to ensure they can appropriately give credit to authors as they navigate the wide variety and type of sources available. Within this assignment, discussion and reflection …

The Structure Of Chinese Higher Education Corruption: A Case Statistical Analysis, Qingli Meng

Ethics Conference

Corruption in the Chinese higher educational sector is an increasing concern but it has not been systematically studied. This paper distinguishes three major intermingled structural typologies of corruption in the Chinese higher education sector: academic specific, non-academic specific and a combination of the two. Data supporting this conceptualization come from a case statistical analysis of a non-randomized sample of 215 court decisions on corruption cases detected in Chinese universities during 1994-2009, complemented with a perception-based survey in different Chinese universities. The result postulates taxonomy of the distribution of corruption among the three typologies. This study finds non-academic specific corruption cases …

Big Opportunities Or Big Problems?: Participants’ Views On Big Data, Helen Harton, Michael Mintz, Kristin Broussard

Ethics Conference

At the most recent convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, there were three symposia dedicated to using big data methodologies for social research. Despite this push for academic researchers to use social networking sites in experimental contexts, popular opinion often reflects negative attitudes towards researchers conducting big data experiments without acquiring fully informed consent from the users whose data is being used. Following a recent study published by Facebook (Kramer, Guillory & Hancock, 2014), concern was raised over how the researchers approached the consent process and managed the harm from perceived privacy violations (Ross, 2014). To more …

University Faculty Perceptions Of Research Practices And Misconduct, Anita Gordon, Helen Harton

Ethics Conference

This poster shares selected results from a national survey, funded by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, to investigate the perceptions of research misconduct by faculty researchers from four disciplinary areas (biology, social work, sociology, and psychology). About 4,500 faculty from 107 randomly selected research-intensive and master’s comprehensive universities were invited to participate, leading to a response rate of approximately 40%. Respondents assessed scenarios depicting researcher misbehavior and reported how likely they would be to take those actions under the same circumstances. They also rated their perceptions of how wrong the actions were, how likely the actions were to become …

The Poor Of 1984: The Roots Of George Orwell's Final Novel, James M. Lang

Ethics Conference

Most American readers know George Orwell as the author of 1984 and Animal Farm, and as such consider him a staunch critic of communism and prophet of the surveillance state. But Orwell spent much of his writing career focused on exploring the cause and nature of poverty, and remained a committed socialist until his death. This lecture will put 1984 within the full context of Orwell’s career, and especially his lifelong criticism of big business and laissez-faire capitalism.

Topic 1: Utilitarian Ethics, Lee Eysturlid

Considerations in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Diversity Of Depoliticization?, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

An ideologically homogeneous discipline of political psychology is a serious problem. But undoing the field's homogeneity may not suffice to address this problem. Instead, we should consider undoing the politicization.

Vulnerability, Preventability, And Responsibility: Exploring Some Normative Implications Of The Human Condition, Daniel E. Wueste

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Presented March 17, 2015. Papers presented for the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University.

Does The Iranian Model Of Kidney Donation Compensation Work As An Ethical Global Model?, Jordan Potter

Journal of Health Ethics

Throughout the world, there is a massive global shortage of viable organs available for transplantation, and systems of cadaveric organ donation have thus far been unable to address this shortage. One potential remedy to this problem is to incentive live organ donation via cash incentives and other benefits, i.e. an organ sale, and this is the type of system Iran has used to effectively eliminate its national kidney waiting list since the late 1990s. In this article, the Iranian model of kidney donation compensation will be analyzed for its ability and effectiveness as an ethical global model, and this is …

Csr Activity Of Tobacco Companies In Indonesia: Is It A Genuine Social Responsibility?, Harsman Tandilittin, Christoph Luetge

Journal of Health Ethics

The adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs in the tobacco industry has sparked a contentious debate in the international community. Tobacco industry’s CSR activities are honored by the government and Indonesian community with CSR awards due to their positive contributions. To assess the CSR activities of the tobacco companies and whether they are genuine forms of social responsibility or business motivation, we have collected the CSR activities and compared them with the negative impact of the tobacco industry in Indonesia. The CSR activities are in no way related to the negative impacts of tobacco in Indonesia. Therefore, CSR programs …

The Heart Of Human Rights By Allen Buchanan, Sandra Raponi

Publications

Review of Allen Buchanan's The Heart of Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

An Examination Of Morality In A Naturalistic Universe, Chris Hoops

Philosophy Summer Fellows

Naturalism is the view that our death marks a final and irreversible extinction. We are born into this world, we live our lives, and we ultimately perish from existence. This being the case, many naturalists urge people to live as fulfilling lives as possible. If this life is the only life people have, whatever constitutes the fullest or best way to live should be the way a person lives. However, what exactly constitutes a fulfilling life by the naturalist is not entirely agreed upon. Some naturalists claim that having individual happiness is what constitutes a fulfilling life, while others claim …

False Consciousness As A Major Hindrance To Control Of Corruption In Africa, John O. Ouko

International Journal of African Development

Corruption is rampant in Africa despite the effort to fight it. An effective fight against corruption requires a clear and firm understanding of the factors that cause and conduce it. Using Kenya as an example, I will examine some of the social, economic, political, and legal factors that have been given as causal explanations of corruption. By focusing primarily on political corruption, I will argue that false consciousness among the masses and leaders has to be overcome for the fight against corruption to be effective, and, by extension, for meaningful development to take place in Kenya and many other African …

Hopeful Losers? A Moral Case For Mixed Electoral Systems, Loren King

Political Science Faculty Publications

Liberal democracies encourage citizen participation and protect our freedoms, yet these regimes elect politicians and decide important issues with electoral and legislative systems that are less inclusive than other arrangements. Some citizens inevitably have more influence than others. Is this a problem? Yes, because similarly just but more inclusive systems are possible. Political theorists and philosophers should be arguing for particular institutional forms, with particular geographies, consistent with justice.

Les démocraties libérales encouragent la participation citoyenne et protègent nos libertés. Pourtant, ces régimes élisent des politiciens et décident de problèmes importants via les systèmes électoral et législatif, qui sont moins …

Arendt After Jerusalem, Graham Macphee

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Teleological Exploration Of The Plausibility Of Moral Knowledge, Kevin Lebel King Jr.

Masters Theses

Natural selection seems to offer a compelling case for the development of evaluative judgments independent of evaluative facts. If such a case can be made, then how do moral judgments correlate to moral facts? It seems that there would be no tight connection from judgments to truth and moral judgments would be unwarranted. Gilbert Harman realized the implications of a probable non-moral genealogy. Richard Joyce goes on to provide a probable non-moral genealogy that would epistemically undermine moral judgments as Harman thought. Joyce argues that in a naturalistic world natural selection can account for moral judgments, but that the truth …

Aquinas The Pacifist? A Comparative Study, Lloyd George Pemberton

Masters Theses

It is claimed by some scholars that when recent analytical tools of interpretation are placed upon the Summa Theologica, a presumption against harm emerges from the mind of Thomas Aquinas as he formulated his just war theory. This presumption against harm is thereby construed as Aquinas having an affinity toward pacifism. The present thesis offers a comparative study between two scholars, Richard Miller and Gregory Reichberg. Miller supports this claim while Reichberg finds it unjustifiable. The thesis lays out the arguments put forth by both, ultimately siding with Reichberg as making the better case. In addition, I offer my own …

A Comparative Analysis Of The Civilizations Of Fukuzawa Yukichi And Sun Yat-Sen, Matthew Jones

Global Tides

This essay will explore the different theories of civilization for two major Asian political philosophers Fukuzawa Yukichi, and Sun Yat-sen. Both men wrote during the late 19^th and early 20^th century just as their respective countries, Japan and China, were facing immense pressure to subordinate themselves to the West which threatened the collapse of their historical structures of civilization. The two men’s theories reflect the transitory nature of the times by drawing heavily from both Eastern and Western traditions to create a unique blend of the two which would have an immense impact on the modern course of …