The burgeoning science of ethics has produced a trend toward pessimism. Ordinary moral thought and action, we're told, are profoundly influenced by arbitrary factors and ultimately driven by unreasoned feelings. This book counters the current orthodoxy on its own terms by carefully engaging with the empirical literature. The resulting view, optimistic rationalism, shows the pervasive role played by reason our moral minds, and ultimately defuses sweeping debunking arguments in ethics. The science does suggest that moral knowledge and virtue don't come easily. However, despite the heavy influence of automatic and unconscious processes that have been shaped by evolutionary pressures, we needn't reject ordinary moral psychology as fundamentally flawed or in need of serious repair. Reason can be corrupted in ethics just as in other domains, but a special pessimism about morality in particular is unwarranted. Moral judgment and motivation are fundamentally rational enterprises not beholden to the passions.
This book provides a comprehensive overview of research methods in the behavioral sciences, focusing primarily on the conceptual issues inherent in conducting research. It covers topics that are often omitted from other texts, including measurement issues, correlational research, qualitative research, and integrative literature reviews. The book also includes discussions of diversity issues as they related to behavioral science research. New to this edition are chapter boxes that focus on applied issues related to each chapter topic. Throughout the book, readable examples and informative tables and figures are provided. The authors also take a contemporary approach to topics such as research ethics, replication research, and data collection (including internet research).
Pressing ethical issues are at the foreground of newfound knowledge of how the brain works, how the brain fails, and how information about its functions and failures are addressed, recorded and shared. In Neuroethics: Anticipating the Future, a distinguished group of contributors tackle current critical questions and anticipate the issues on the horizon. What new balances should be struck between diagnosis and prediction, or invasive and non-invasive interventions, given the rapid advances in neuroscience? Are new criteria needed for the clinical definition of death for those eligible for organ donation? What educational, social and medical opportunities will new neuroscience discoveries bring to the children of tomorrow? As data from emerging technologies are made available on public databases, what frameworks will maximize benefits while ensuring privacy of health information? How is the environment shaping humans, and humans shaping the environment? These challenging questions and other future-looking neuroethical concerns are discussed in depth. Written by eminent scholars from diverse disciplines - neurology and neuroscience, ethics, law, public health, and philosophy - this new volume on neuroethics sets out the conditions for active consideration. It is essential reading for the fields of neuroethics, neurosciences and psychology, and an invaluable resource for physicians in neurology and neurosurgery, psychiatry, paediatrics, and rehabilitation medicine, academics in humanities and law, and health policy makers.
Although psychologists have been relatively reticent in approaching ethical issues as a research topic, some have begun to use psychological principles, theories, and studies to understand and solve ethical dilemmas in their research. This book examines relations between ethics and psychology: the contributions that psychology can make to ethical studies and standards in all areas of human empirical science; and the specific ethics of psychological research. The eleven contributors describe the kinds of ethical problems that arise in psychological research, review current literature with a focus on empirical studies of ethical issues in human research, and identify the theoretical and methodological tools they use to understand the ethical problems arising in their work. This book addresses important issues such as the definitions of normative and deviant groups, the discovery and neutralization of bias, sensitivity to the interests of experimental subjects, and the counterweighing factors in rules, regulations, and enforcement. Barbara H. Stanley is a professor of psychology at City University of New York, John Jay College, and a lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University. Joan E. Sieber is a professor of psychology at California State University, Hayward. They are the coeditors of Social Research on Children and Adolescents: Ethical Issues. Gary B. Melton is a professor of neuropsychiatry, law, pediatrics, and psychology and director of the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina. He is the editor of Adolescent Abortion: Psychological and Legal Issues (Nebraska 1986).
This book investigates how different types of Japanese management systems are able to motivate stakeholders, including employees, top management, stockholders, customers and transaction partners, to participate actively in the organizational behavior that improves business performance. The various systems motivating stakeholders are examined in five sections: strategy and business restructuring for enhancing the business value; management control systems and budgeting; cost management; management accounting for supply chain and shared services; and, process management.
"The book provides opportunities for unusually good discussions of ethical problems that can confront researchers in any field." —Religious Studies Review ". . . this book provides a ready-made package for the teaching of ethics in research." —Journal of Third World Studies ". . . Research Ethics is an extremely useful and stimulating book . . . recommended for wide classroom use on both the undergraduate and graduate level as well as for all academic library collections." —Journal of Information Ethics " . . . an excellent introduction into research ethics." —Journal of College Science Teaching "A useful supplement to faculty teaching courses on scientific ethics and a resource for instructors who give lectures on the topic in more general courses." —Robert L. Sprague, Director, Institute for Research on Human Development "This book is important because it defines and clarifies subtle ethical issues present but not necessarily easily recognizable as such in the everyday conduct of research." —Doody's Health Sciences Book Review Journal "A very useful text for courses dealing with ethics in the research setting." —Science, Technology & Society " . . . a welcome collection of materials that can be used in a variety of ways by those who are genuinely concerned that scientific research remain faithful to its ideals." —American Journal of Human Genetics "This clearly written, reader-friendly book addresses the need for systematic education in research ethics and suggests that researchers themselves are the best teachers for their students. . . . The scenarios are realistic . . . , well presented, and organized around a series of topics that are both diverse and relevant to the practicing investigator." —American Journal of Psychiatry " . . . a landmark teaching tool . . . " —Science Books & Films [an "Editor's Choice" book] "I think this book is an excellent introduction into research ethics. The material is presented in an exceptionally thought-provoking manner, and it serves as a reference guide and as a source for seminar topics" —Robert H. Tamarin, Journal of College Science Teaching This comprehensive casebook for teaching research ethics in the sciences and the humanities covers such topics as plagiarism, confidentiality, conflict of interest, fraud and misconduct, the reporting of data, and the participation of human and animal subjects in research. An annotated bibliography will help instructors identify resources to use as supplements to cases, assist readers who are developing courses in research ethics, and aid further research on the subject.
With the conclusion of the Decade of the Brain and Decade of the Mind, neuroscience has advanced well beyond single neuron functions, and begun to investigate global properties that emerge from central nervous system operation. Core ethical issues for neural intervention, in consequence, now touch on concerns over how the individual as a whole may be affected. Central to these concerns is the fundamental value of the human being, which lends normative weight to questions, interventions, and practices influencing him or her. Yet, despite wide recognition of the crucial relevance of human value, the derivation of metaethical principles that underwrite this value is by no means uniformly agreed to. Why and how the human being is normatively privileged, accordingly, emerge as core questions that frame issues of ethical praxis. This book tackles this dissonance, and exposes the philosophical foundations that are rooting contemporary divisions in ethical approaches to intervention in the nervous system.
Recent scandals and controversies, such as data fabrication in federally funded science, data manipulation and distortion in private industry, and human embryonic stem cell research, illustrate the importance of ethics in science. Responsible Conduct of Research, now in a completely updated second edition, provides an introduction to the social, ethical, and legal issues facing scientists today.