Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations

Erskine, Toni, Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp.xii+241 RAE2008

Why Ideas Matter in International Relations : Hans Morgenthau, Classical Realism, and the Moral Construction of Power Politics

Williams, Mike, 'Why ideas matter in International Relations: Hans Morgenthau, Classical Realism, and the Moral Construction of Power Politics', International Organization (2004) 58(4) pp.633-665 RAE2008

Ludwig Feuerbach's Critique of Religion and the End of Moral Philosophy

Williams, H. (2006). Ludwig Feuerbach's Critique of Religion and the End of Moral Philosophy. In Moggach, D. (Ed.), The New Hegelians: Politics and Philosophy in the Hegelian School (pp.50-66). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Introduction; Part I. Eduard Gans: 1. Eduard Gans on poverty and on the constitutional debate; 2. Ludwig Feuerbach's Critique of Religion and the end of moral philosophy; Part II. Ludwig Feuerbach: 3. The symbolic dimension and the politics of Left Hegelianism; Part III. Bruno Bauer: 4. Exclusiveness and political universalism in Bruno Bauer; 5. Republican rigorism and emancipation in Bruno Bauer; Part IV. Edgar Bauer: 6. Edgar Bauer and The Origins of the Theory of Terrorism; Max Stirner 7. Ein Menschenleben: Hegel and Stirner; 8. 'The State and I': Max Stirner's anarchism; Friedrich Engels: 9. Engels and the invention of the catastrophist conception of the industrial revolution; Karl Marx: 10. The basis of the state in the Marx of 1842; 11. Marx and Feuerbachian essence: returning to the question of 'Human Essence' in historical materialism; 12. Freedom and the 'Realm of Necessity'; Concluding with Hegel :13. Work, language and community: a response to Hegel's critics. RAE2008

Moral shielding: A grounded theory of integrity maintenance in multidisciplinary teams

Using a classic grounded theory methodology (CGT), this study explores the phenomenon of moral shielding within mental health multidisciplinary teams (MDTS). The study was located within three catchment areas engaged in acute mental health service practice. The main concern identified was the maintenance of a sense of personal integrity during situational binds. Through theoretical sampling thirty two practitioners, including; doctors, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, counsellors and psychologists, where interviewed face to face. In addition, emergent concepts were identified through observation of MDTs in clinical and research practice. Following a classic grounded theory methodology, data collection and analysis occurred simultaneously. A constant comparative approach was adopted and resulted in the immergence of three sub- core categories; moral abdication, moral hinting and pseudo-compliance. Moral abdication seeks to re-position within an event in order to avoid or deflect the initial obligation to act, it is a strategy used to remove or reduce moral ownership. Moral gauging represents the monitoring of an event with the goal of judging the congruence of personal principles and commitments with that of other practitioners. This strategy is enacted in a bid to seek allies for the support of a given moral position. Pseudo-compliance represents behaviour that hides desired principles and commitments in order to shield them from challenge. This strategy portrays agreement with the dominant position within the MDT, whilst holding a contrary position. It seeks to preserve a reservoir of emotional energy required to maintain a sense of personal integrity. Practitioners who were successful in enacting moral shielding were found to not experience significant emotional distress associated with the phenomenon of moral distress; suggesting that these practitioners had found mechanisms to manage situational binds that threatened their sense of personal integrity.

Medical education as moral formation: an Aristotelian account of medical professionalsim.

The medical professionalism movement, bolstered by many influential medical organizations and institutions, has in the last decade produced a number of conceptual definitions of professionalism and a number of concrete proposals for its measurement and teaching. These projects, however laudable, are misguided when they treat professionalism as a unitary descriptive concept rather than as a contested and therefore primarily evaluative one; when they conceive professionalism as a domain of medical practice separable in principle from other domains; and when they treat professionalism as, in principle, a specifiable goal or product of sufficiently well designed educational curricula. The logic of professionalism-as-product corresponds to the logic of techne (art or practical skill) in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle provides a cogent argument, however, that the moral excellences denoted by "professionalism" cannot be "produced" or even prespecified in the concrete; rather, they must be acquired through long practice under the careful concrete guidance of teachers who themselves embody these moral excellences. Phronesis (practical wisdom) rather than techne must therefore be the guiding logic of educational initiatives in medical professional formation, with particular emphasis on close mentorship and on the moral character both of students and of those who teach them.

Moral masochism: on the connection between guilt and self-punishment.

Do people sometimes seek to atone for their transgressions by harming themselves physically? The current results suggest that they do. People who wrote about a past guilt-inducing event inflicted more intense electric shocks on themselves than did those who wrote about feeling sad or about a neutral event. Moreover, the stronger the shocks that guilty participants administered to themselves, the more their feelings of guilt were alleviated. We discuss how this method of atonement relates to other methods examined in previous research.

Two Distinct Moral Mechanisms for Ascribing and Denying Intentionality.

Philosophers and legal scholars have long theorized about how intentionality serves as a critical input for morality and culpability, but the emerging field of experimental philosophy has revealed a puzzling asymmetry. People judge actions leading to negative consequences as being more intentional than those leading to positive ones. The implications of this asymmetry remain unclear because there is no consensus regarding the underlying mechanism. Based on converging behavioral and neural evidence, we demonstrate that there is no single underlying mechanism. Instead, two distinct mechanisms together generate the asymmetry. Emotion drives ascriptions of intentionality for negative consequences, while the consideration of statistical norms leads to the denial of intentionality for positive consequences. We employ this novel two-mechanism model to illustrate that morality can paradoxically shape judgments of intentionality. This is consequential for mens rea in legal practice and arguments in moral philosophy pertaining to terror bombing, abortion, and euthanasia among others.

Planes de área en matemáticas y autonomía escolar: un estudio de casos

AUTONOMÍA ESCOLAR Y PLANIFICACIÓN EN MATEMÁTICAS La autonomía escolar se estableció en Colombia en 1994, con la intención de que las instituciones educativas adaptaran el currículo a su contexto. Como consecuencia, instituciones y profesores se hicieron responsables del diseño curricular en todas las áreas, con la guía de lineamientos curriculares publicados por el gobierno. Estos diseños curriculares que se plasman en el plan de área. En este trabajo caracterizamos los planes de área de matemáticas en una muestra de conveniencia de 18 colegios de educación básica secundaria y educación media de Bogotá y sus cercanías y exploramos en qué medida se llevan a la práctica los lineamientos gubernamentales en esos documentos. Codificamos los planes de área teniendo en cuenta las cuatro componentes del currículo: el contenido, los objetivos, la metodología y la evaluación. Para cada una de estas componentes, establecimos:1. el nivel de generalidad con el que se trata, 2. los términos que las instituciones utilizan para referirse a ella y 3. la coherencia y la estructura con la que las instituciones la describen. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto la variedad de aproximaciones de las instituciones de la muestra a la planificación del área de matemáticas. Esta variedad se constata en el número de niveles de generalidad que aparecen en los documentos, en la diversidad de términos que se utilizan para referirse a cada uno de los componentes curriculares y en el nivel de detalle con que se describen. Los resultados sugieren que, en las instituciones de la muestra en las que las ideas de estándar y competencia aparecen en el plan de área, estas ideas no juegan un papel organizador del diseño curricular. Así mismo, los resultados muestran que no existe un significado compartido para los términos “estándar”, “objetivo”, “logro” o “desempeño” entre los documentos de la muestra. Adicionalmente, hemos observado que no se constata coherencia entre esta expectativa de aprendizaje y el contenido propuesto dentro de la planificación. Estos resultados nos llevan a conjeturar que, en las instituciones a las que pertenecen los documentos de la muestra, no existe una aproximación sistemática, estructurada y fundamentada a la planificación curricular.

Un imperativo moral: la enseñanza de la estadística no puede dejarse al azar

La conferencia aborda la enseñanza de la estadística, destacando tres modelos específicos del área: la guía GAISE, el ciclo investigativo PPDAC, y el ambiente para el aprendizaje del razonamiento estadístico SRLE. Además, se centra en el desarrollo del pensamiento estadístico según la jerarquía cognitiva de alfabetización estadística, razonamiento y pensamiento estadístico.

La ruptura de una economía moral y las deslegitimación de las deudas hipotecarias

In Spain, during the recent housing bubble, purchasing a home seemed the most advantageous strategy to access housing, and there was a wide social consensus about the unavoidability of mortgage indebtedness. However, such consensus has been challenged by the financial and real-estate crisis. The victims of home repossessions have been affected by the transgression of several principles, such as the fair compensation for effort and sacrifice, the prioritisation of basic needs over financial commitments, the possibility of a second chance for over-indebted people, or the State's responsibility to guarantee its citizens' livelihood. Such principles may be understood as part of a moral economy, and their transgression has resulted in the emergence of a social movement, the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), that is questioning the legitimacy of mortgage debts. The article reflects on the extent to which the perception of over-indebtedness and evictions as unfair situations can have an effect on the reproduction of the political-economic system, insofar the latter is perceived as able or unable to repair injustice.

Mapping cosmopolis: moral topographies of the medieval city

Cosmopolis is a concept that has a long history in many cultures around the globe. It is a mirroring of the 'social' and 'natural' worlds, such that in one is seen the order and the structures of the other -- a mutual 'mapping'. In this paper I examine how the presence of cosmopolis -- a Christianised cosmopolis of the European Middle Ages -- was made evident in the representation and formation of cities at that time. I reveal a dualism between the social and spatial ordering of both city and cosmos which defined and reinforced social and spatial boundaries in urban landscapes, evident for example in the 11th and 12th centuries. Recently, Toulmin (1992) has taken the idea of cosmopolis to argue that it has been a persistent presence in Western - Enlightenment science, philosophy, and religion -- a 'hidden agenda of modernity'. I contend that, as an idea, cosmopolis has a much earlier circulation in European thinking, not least in the Middle Ages. Locating cosmopolis in the medieval and the modern periods then begs a question of what is it that really makes the two distinct and separate? All too often human geographers have emphasised discontinuities between the 'medieval' and 'modern' age, locating the 'rise of modernity' some time in the Enlightenment period. However, what 'mapping' cosmopolis reveals are continuities, binding time and space together, which when looked at begin to help query the modernity concept itself.