This book explores an undeveloped area in postmodern thought: organizational ethics. Ethical debates and analyses usually focus on a particular act or action, an actor, and/or how a secular society should address any of those particular persons or events. In the Post Modern age, ethical decisions and policies are characterized by moral and cultural pluralism. However, there is a second factor that complicates ethical and policy decisions even further. This book argues that in the postmodern age ethical decisions often need to be understood as part of the decision making of organizations and bureaucracies. Organizational decisions often have direct bearing on the choices made by individuals. Two areas that exemplify postmodern issue are the areas of health care and education. For example the decision making of Admissions Officers in American higher education, are influenced by decisions that have been made by the university about the size of the class and the diversity of the class. Health Care organizations make policy decisions that affect every aspect of a patient’s care from admission to treatment and the types of care that are or are not offered. Both education and health care are the object of the significant investment of resources, both areas are value laden in postmodern, pluralistic societies, and yet we do not have a comprehensive method to understand them or evaluate them. This book is of interest to bioethicists, physicians, nurses, health care policy students, educational policy experts, students and government regulators.

This book provides a critical and innovative reassessment of contemporary debate on the human-animal relationship. Starting with a critique of the “official philosophical narration” of animal studies, and then a reassessment of Descartes' animal-machine paradigm, Simone Ghelli tracks down the conceptual coordinates of what he calls “the paradigm of the suffering animal.” The suffering animal is a materialist thesis on the condition of the living, which, while contesting the metaphysical and anthropocentric structure of western axiology, eventually redefines and re-establishes ethics on the experience of suffering, that is on the mutual compassion sentient beings feel before the unjust sight of their finitude. The suffering animal paradigm shows how, within our philosophical tradition, the animal question has been always intertwined with the questions of atheism and of materialism. The ultimate aim of this research is to define the “ethical equilibrium” between aspects of the living, such as weakness and power, joy and suffering, life and death, which our philosophical tradition largely tends to consider as mutually excluding. To overcome such oppositions means avoiding opposing, in our ethical and political discourse, the defense of the vulnerability of the weak and the freedom of the powerful.

This book discusses ethical behavior through the genocidal stages of the Holocaust. Paul E. Wilson first looks at the antisemitism in Germany and Europe beginning in the decades preceding the Nazis reign of terror, and goes on to discuss the ethical decisions made in the initial stages that moved society toward genocide. The author maintains that the stages of genocide represent subtle changes that can be happening within a society in response to the moral choices made by actors. By giving attention to the stages of genocide in the Holocaust, this book contributes to the overall understanding of how the Holocaust was possible, and encourages the moral community to join the watch for the development of genocide in the modern world.

This book provides the first systematic study on three types of incentives for organ donation. It covers extensive research conducted in four culturally different societies: Hong Kong, mainland China, Iran and the United States, and shows on the basis of the research that a new model of incentives can be constructed to enhance organ donation in contemporary societies. The book focuses on three types of incentives: honorary incentives, commonly adopted in the United States and other Western countries by offering things such as a thank-you card and a memorial park for donors to encourage donations motivated by pure altruism; compensationalist incentives, adopted in the Islamic Republic of Iran to encourage donation by providing monetary compensation to unrelated living donors for appreciating their altruistic contribution of donation; and familist incentives, implemented in Israel and mainland China to provide priority to organ transplantation to donors and/or their family members. The book demonstrates that a new model of incentives must go beyond offering only one type of incentives and should rather include different types of incentives that are practically effective, politically legitimate and ethically justifiable for particular societies. This implies that suitable incentive measures may vary from society to society to optimize organ donation. This book provides a clear reference for both the scholars and practitioners in the field of organ transplantation, as well as for general readers interested in bioethics and health care policy.

An appreciable part of the scientific community seems to believe that contemporary physical theories are likely to affect the construction of any overall philosophical outlook, especially insofar as they are relevant to the settlement of certain persistent philosophical controversies. Two physical conceptions - the theory of relativity and the quantum theory - which have brought about a reformulation of the fundamental principles common to all the natural sciences, are considered particularly important in this regard. These conceptions have shed new light, it is held, on a number of problems involving empiricism and rationalism, determinism and indeterminism, materialism and spiritualism, idealism and realism. Such philosophical implications of the theory of relativity and quantum theory have been Widely discussed by both philosophers and philosophizing physicists. The trend in this development has been to portray these theories as generally conducive to an idealist stance.

This textbook takes a new approach to economics by taking into account behavioral sciences and ethics. The basics of institutional economics are the starting point of the book, which are combined with insights from business ethics and behavioral science. It analyzes human behavior in order to discover incentives for economic agents to behave in a welfare-maximizing way, and analyzes the impact of human behavior and morality on economic systems, markets and politics. This textbook draws from new research results from behavioral economics, as well as from other disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, thus leading to new conclusions for economic science.

Research is defined by the Australian Research Council as “the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies, inventions and understandings”. Research is thus the foundation for knowledge. It produces evidence and informs actions that can provide wider benefit to a society.

This book surveys the distinctions that underlie the unbound potential and existential risks of life expansion and radical modifications posed by a transhuman world. Humanness is in flux as human bodies are being hacked and altered in their quest for super wellness, super intelligence and super longevity. Now is the time to discuss how best to think about dealing with bodies that have been hacked to exceed natural physical limits or more technically, species typical functioning. Enter the advent of transhumanism to take uncertainty by the horns.

Beheading is not an uncommon undertaking. As a particularized physical violence, it has been practiced by all societies and civilizations at some point in their history. In fact, for millennia public beheadings around the world were routine. In contemporary international society some states and many non-state actors regularly engage in this undertaking.

Despite the fact that the human life of the past cannot be understood without taking into account its ecological relationships, environmental studies are often marginalised in archaeology. This is the first book that, by discussing the meaning and purpose we give to the expression `environmental archaeology', investigates the reasons for such a problem.

This book addresses new and evolving thorny issues in clinical ethics consultation. It is a book for our time. The contributors provide essential critical reflection on the standards and methods of training clinical ethics consultants as the field seeks to professionalize. This collection incorporates both North American and European experts, offering different perspectives on issues such as marginalized populations, the opioid epidemic, complex discharge, micro-managing families, and continually challenging issues at the end-of-life, such as determinations of brain death, physician-assisted death, and futility.

This book addresses new and evolving thorny issues in clinical ethics consultation. It is a book for our time. The contributors provide essential critical reflection on the standards and methods of training clinical ethics consultants as the field seeks to professionalize. This collection incorporates both North American and European experts, offering different perspectives on issues such as marginalized populations, the opioid epidemic, complex discharge, micro-managing families, and continually challenging issues at the end-of-life, such as determinations of brain death, physician-assisted death, and futility.

This book presents a comprehensive theory of the ethics and political philosophy of public health surveillance based on reciprocal obligations among surveillers, those under surveillance, and others potentially affected by surveillance practices.

This book offers a critical examination of certain ideas and values—such as remembering, forgiveness, story-telling through Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, etc.—that undergird the transitional practices and mechanisms of societies emerging from conflicts. It does so by making the survivors’ experience the supreme and ultimate judge of the legitimacy of such practices. While many scholars have dealt with these topics, this book provides a unique perspective on them by using personal stories, narratives and memoirs of the survivors as a checking point of the theoretical elaboration of these ideas and values.

Since the dawn of civilisation philosophers and sages alike have been concerned about the potential for government to become a Leviathan-like monster. In this book Professor Drew shows how a careful application of natural law principles can mitigate this threat of Leviathan and also contribute to the flourishing of people.
To do so Natural Law and Government examines the trade-off between human dignity and the common good during the public policy response to COVID-19. Specifically, Professor Drew details his concerns regarding the emergence of concentrations of power and competence in government – changes that have sadly given rise to the repression of the vitality of citizens.