Philosophy Commons^™

Little Gods And Little Heroes: Hyperreal Ethics In God Games And Online Gaming, G. Christopher Williams

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Media critics, notably Jean Baudrillard, have suggested that the environment of simulations are to be defined as something more real than the real, or, in his terms, hyperreal. If hyperrealities are indeed the way that we can define the environment of multimedia technologies like video games, what sorts of ethical considerations should exist in a place that gamers conceive as more real than the real? This essay considers what ethical considerations are worth contemplating as gamers begin to take on the roles of gods and heroes in multiplayer video games. The little gods and heroes whose identities gamers have begun …

Toward Eco-Friendly Aeshetics, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Center For Professional Ethics, Winter 2005, Case Western Reserve University

Center for Professional Ethics

Incomplete draft of issue:

Table of Contents:

• The Race at Case: One Leg of a Long Marathon
• Truth and Trust in a Time of Continuing Change: A Talk by Caroline Whitbeck
• Religious Lawyering: Professor Russell Pearce Keeps His Faith
• News and Notes

Book Review, David Dolinko

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Epistemological Argument Against Desert, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Most contemporary political philosophers deny that justice requires giving people what they deserve. According to a familiar anti-desert argument, the influence of genes and environment on people's actions and traits undermines all desert-claims. According to a less familiar – but more plausible – argument, the influence of genes and environment on people's actions and traits undermines some desert-claims (or all desert-claims to an extent). But, it says, we do not know which ones (or to what extent). This article examines this ‘epistemological’ argument against desert. It gives reason to believe that it fails, emphasizing the importance of justice relative to …

On The Relevance Of Political Philosophy To Business Ethics, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The central problems of political philosophy (e.g., legitimate authority, distributive justice) mirror the central problems of business ethics. The question naturally arises: should political theories be applied to problems in business ethics? If a version of egalitarianism is the correct theory of justice for states, for example, does it follow that it is the correct theory of justice for businesses? If states should be democratically governed by their citizens, should businesses be democratically managed by their employees? Most theorists who have considered these questions, including John Rawls in Political Liberalism, and Robert Phillips and Joshua Margolis in a 1999 article, …

Do Ceos Get Paid Too Much?, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In 2003, CEOs of the 365 largest U.S. corporations were paid on average $8 million, 301 times as much as factory workers. This paper asks whether CEOs get paid too much. Appealing to widely recognized moral values, I distinguish three views of justice in wages: the agreement view, the desert view, and the utility view. I argue that, no matter which view is correct, CEOs get paid too much. I conclude by offering two ways CEO pay might be reduced.

Becoming A Better Me : An Examination Of Character Education At The Elementary Level, Lori D. Dobbin

Graduate Research Papers

The first day of school can be a difficult adjustment for many students. Some . students struggle with new settings and new rules. Each student enters the classroom with personal morals and values. These morals and character traits greatly influence the student's academic and social progress. This paper reviews character building and its unique ability to alter the perception of the student's world. The paper looks at the deficits of character and introduces possible solutions to restoring character in elementary-aged children. A closer look at the history of character education lays the foundation for a better understanding of character.

School Counselors And Character Education, Jacob M. Mueller

Graduate Research Papers

Character Education can be an essential aspect of creating a respectful climate in the school setting. Tragic incidents in schools across the country have heightened the awareness of how to create positive situations for all students who attend public schools. Too often, this awareness is not followed up with action. Character Education is an opportunity for educators to step up and put actions behind their lip service. Legislation surrounding education in America today sometimes creates difficult obstacles in implementing programs to foster a positive school environment. It can be done however, and is being done.

Burn The Panopticon: Irigaray's Ethics, Difference, Poetics, Simone Roberts

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph of Prologue]

The following essay has a purpose more than a thesis. This essay explains the central tenets of Irigaray's ethics of sexual difference through an understanding her work as that of a symbolist philosopher. Symbolist poetry and French Feminist philosophy like Irigaray's have several qualities in common. One is that the literal level of language is not where the action is. A reader must think associatively on many levels at once in order to gather and interpret the several indirect messages sent by a particular image or metaphor. Another is an acquired comfort with paradox. Paradoxes lie …

Risk And Ethics In Biological Control, Ernest S. Delfosse

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

All introduced natural enemies present a degree of risk to nontarget species. Since most biological control programs use relatively host-specific natural enemies, the risk to nontarget species is generally very low, particularly from biological control of weeds, which uses extensively tested and validated host-specificity testing procedures to predict risk. However, many of the published comments about risks of biological control are superficial or misleading, often inappropriately lumping risk from all taxa of agents as “the risk of biological control,” and ignore the potential benefits, rather than dealing with species-by-species risk and benefits. Particularly confounding accurate predictions is the common mixing …

Toward A Posthuman Ethics, Dongshin Yi

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editor's Introduction]

Setting a posthuman ethics as a goal toward which the collaboration of posthumanism and ethics must move, Yi in his essay, Toward a Posthuman Ethics, points out that the collaboration is detained because current debates on the cyborg harbor on the question of representations and consider how political, social and cultural problems of the human are reconfigured, and possibly resolved, by the cyborg. Thus, the debates are bound to be retrospective in approach and circular in direction, as they fail to recognize new possibilities that the cyborg may present. Arguing that the failure indicates the cyborg is being …

Adr Ethics, Scott R. Peppet

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Center For Professional Ethics, Spring 2004, Case Western Reserve University

Center for Professional Ethics

Table of Contents:

• Bonhoefer and King: Legacies and Lessons
• An Extraordinary Man: Case Celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.
• It's About Ethics: An Interview with Robert P. Lawry
• Current Ethical Controversies in Internal Research: A Talk by Ruth Maklin
• Director's Corner: Civic Duty, Civic Courage by Robert P. Lawry
• News and Notes

Stem Cell Research?: Yes--Out Of Love For The Neighbor, Alan G. Padgett

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Volunteerism Develops Communities, Trains Leaders, And Guards Democracy: Odessa, Texas 1896-1948, Debra Noe Gibbs

Graduate Theses

Volunteers were an essential tool used to build our nation and communities. The creation and maintenance of communities across the United States relied heavily on the activities of volunteers and their organizations in order to meet the endless needs of both the citizens and the infrastructure. Furthermore, volunteer organizations provided an increase and stability in democracy and in building communities in a variety of ways. First, volunteer organizations filled needs that the government was not able to meet. Second, they were training grounds for developing the skills needed to manage communities. Volunteer associations, by providing avenues and developing skills, helped …

Center For Professional Ethics, Volume 4, Issue 3, 2003, Case Western Reserve University

Center for Professional Ethics

Table of Contents:

• Creating an Environment That Promotes Responsible Research Conduct by Dr. Caroline A. Whitbeck
• Director's Corner: Lying and Justification by Robert P. Lawry
• Leadership in the Global Perspective, Dr. Kazuo Inamori Speaks
• Ethnopsychiatry & American Immigration, Dr. Atwood Gaines Explores and Explains

Center For Professional Ethics, Volume 4, Issue 2, 2003, Case Western Reserve University

Center for Professional Ethics

Table of Contents:

• "Waiting for the Courage to Die": The Role of Live Theatre in Medical Education by Fran Heller
• Building Bridges with Jonathan Sadowksy: A Reprint from the CWRU Observer
• Using Children in Research, Dr. Eric Kodish Explores and Explains
• A Glance at Professor Philip C. Bobbit: The Ends and Means of Stimulating Discussion
• Industry-Sponsored Research -- What's Wrong? Professor Andrew Trew Talks About IRBs, Ethics and Patients
• Director's Corner: The Aftermath of War by Robert P. Lawry
• Spring, 2003 News, Notes, and Future Events

Against The Asymmetry Of Desert, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The concept of desert has traditionally played a central role in theories of both distributive and retributive justice. But while desert continues to play a central role in most contemporary theories of retributive justice, it plays little or no role in most contemporary theories of distributive justice. This asymmetric treatment of desert is prima facie strange. If people should have the punishment they deserve, shouldn’t they also have the social benefits they deserve? I first offer an intuitive argument against the asymmetry, then consider and reject four potential justifications of it. I do not claim that the asymmetry cannot be …

Center For Professional Ethics, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2003, Case Western Reserve University

Center for Professional Ethics

Table of Contents:

• America's Role in The World: Understanding Muslims and Islam
• One Year Later: Remembering September 11, 2001
• Conversations in Bioethics: CWRU President, Dr. Edard Hundert
• A Different Kind of Close Up: Looking at Cinematic Justice
• Winter 2003 News, Notes, and Future Events
• Director's Corner: What Are We Going To Do About It? by Robert P. Lawry

Character Education Program : An Evaluation Description, Hou Chun Kuong

Graduate Research Papers

In today 's world, all children face great uncertainties in a complex and sometimes troubled society. These traits are not always readily apparent and easy to grasp or learn. Today, schools face the challenge of providing youth with the self-esteem, stamina, and support they need to survive, be successful, and develop into strong, competent, caring, and responsible citizens. To meet the challenge schools have either developed or adopted character education programs.

This paper focused on three elements common to most character education programs: (]) the school program must include parent and community outreach, planning and structure, school climate, curriculum, and …

Ethics For Business : Drawing On Indian Values, S K Chakraborty

IIMB Management Review

Prof S K Chakraborty of the Management Centre for Human Values, IIM Calcutta, and author of the Management Ethics Omnibus, shares the essence of his enquiry into the field for over two decades. To the basic question from students and managers as to what there is in ethics for them, teachers must communicate that ethics has fundamental existential payoffs. Especially in today’s fast-paced world, where patience is no longer a virtue and ‘false gospels’ such as rank ordering and corporate gladiatorism are being embraced in toto by the Indian intellectual elite, without pausing to reflect on their own tradition and …

Exploring Ethical Dimensions Through Fiction, Abha Chatterjee

IIMB Management Review

Based on her experience with students of science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Prof Abha Chatterjee provides a case study for exploring the dimensions of ethics through fiction. While literature can be an instrument in raising a variety of ethical values and themes, its advantage lies in that it deals with the concrete and the particular and readers can learn from it without the intense emotional upheavals that accompany such dilemmas in everyday life. Muktadhara, a play by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore was selected as a case study as it evokes problems which engineers would identify …

Ethics And The ‘Other’, Dipankar Gupta

IIMB Management Review

What stops top management from embracing business ethics systems, according to Dipankar Gupta, Professor, JNU and Consultant to KPMG, is the lack of clarity on the subject. All too often, business ethics is equated with religion, spiritualism, or philanthropy. In reality, ethics is a practical approach towards attaining goals in an environment that involves other people. Every right thinking executive would like to function in an environment where norms are explicit and elaborate. The institution of norms, business principles, codes of conduct, mission and vision statements is a call to business ethics and when instituted in a dialogic process the …

Hegel, Nietzsche, And The Postmodern Teleological Impasse, Michael P. Tarpey

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Our postmodern intellectual climate is characterized by two apparently contradictory impulses. One seeks to undermine, unmask, and deflate the pretenses of philosophy as traditionally conceived. The result is a focus on difference, surfaces, and fragmentation. The competing impulse seeks to reconcile, integrate, and synthesize. The result is a holistic focus on deeper similarities behind surface differences. I argue that these competing impulses can be traced back to Hegel and Nietzsche. Thus, an understanding of the relationship between these two thinkers can illuminate our current postmodern condition. I argue that Nietzsche and Hegel are remarkably similar in their approach to many …

Center For Professional Ethics, Volume 3, Issue 4, [2002], Case Western Reserve University

Center for Professional Ethics

Table of Contents:

• Theater and the Law: Periaktos Productions Unites Them Again
• Word of Mouth: A Workshop in Communication Ethics
• Quotable Quotes
• June 26, 2002, Cleveland Bar Association: A Panel Discussion on Ethics, Clarence Darrow and the Law
• From the Impeach Justice Douglas! Performance: Perspectives on Mr. Justice Douglas and the Constitution
• The CWRU Law-Medicine Center presents: Gaps and Inequity in America's Health Care System
• Director's Corner: Hard Questions for Dark Times by Robert P. Lawry

Center For Professional Ethics, Volume 3, Issue 3, [2002], Case Western Reserve University

Center for Professional Ethics

Table of Contents:

• The Costs of Tragedy: Cost-Benefit Analysis and Theories of Justice, Ethicist Martha Nussbaum Speaks at CWRU
• Quotable Quotes
• Director's Corner: Tragic Questions and Moral Vigilance by Robert P. Lawry
• Volume 3, Number 3: Ethics Fellows News and Notes

Desert And Distributive Justice In A Theory Of Justice, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This paper proceeds as follows. First, I present the standard interpretation of Rawls’s account of desert. I then show how this interpretation is inadequate, bringing to light certain subtleties of the account that give it entirely new meaning. Next, I examine the criticisms of Nozick and Sher and show how, due to misconceptions of Rawls’s account of desert, they fail. Finally, I offer a criticism of Rawls’s theory of justice based on the correct interpretation of his account of desert.

Using The Instructional Computing Design Process To Introduce And Incorporate The Boys Town Social Skills, Marcus R. Kurtz

Graduate Research Papers

The following paper takes an inside look on how to use the Instructional Computing Design process to create instructional software that focuses on the Boys Town Social Skills. Within the planning, designing, and development of this multimedia project, the paper will also concentrate on the projects standards, management of the project, and an ongoing evaluation of the project. A great amount of discussion in the paper focuses on how to develop software that is used to instruct and guide learners using the Boys Town Social Skills. Each step of the ICD process will be described to reveal how the Boys …

Center For Professional Ethics, Volume 3, Issue 2, [2002], Case Western Reserve University

Center for Professional Ethics

Table of Contents:

• Continuing the Discussion: September 11, 2001
• The "9/11" Forums
• Director's Corner: Looking Outward by Robert P. Lawry
• Drama Discussion: Teaching Ethics Through Theater by Dariene Rebello Rao and Marvin Rosenberg
• Volume 3, Number 2: News, Notes, and Future Events