<p>Hunger strikes are used as a method of protest to call attention to grievances or political positions and galvanize support for a cause. Historical examples from pre-Christian Europe through Guantanamo Bay have demonstrated various motives, interventions, and outcomes to this unique form of protest. Starvation causes life-threatening damage to the body, and to intervene on an unwilling subject involves invasive medical procedures. As scholars have debated how to approach this medical-ethical dilemma, a tug-of-war exists between autonomy, beneficence, and social justice with regard to the rights of prisoners of war (POWs) and detainees. International documents, legislation, and case law demonstrate vast support for and place precedence on the prisoners right to make their own autonomous, informed medical decisions, and many in the international community lean towards abstaining from intervention on hunger strikes on the basis of patient autonomy. However, there are notable arguments both for and against force-feeding that have been well documented. Despite the vast international dialogue, there is a key component that seems to have been forgotten&mdash;the environment within which the prisoner or detainee resides is immersed with coercive and manipulative activity and interrogation on a regular basis. This environment may impede the ability for the POW or detainee to make an autonomous decision and then leads to the refusal of life-saving, medical intervention on the basis of a decision that is markedly coerced or manipulated. It is therefore noted that a different lens must be used to analyze hunger strike situations for this specific population. </p>

<p> The purpose of this study is to propose a means of reconciling the competing ideas of library and information science's identity, thereby strengthening professional autonomy. I make the case that developing a system of virtue ethics for librarianship would be an effective way to promote that reconciliation. The first step in developing virtue ethics is uncovering librarianship's function. Standard approaches to virtue ethics rely on classical Greek ideas about the nature of being to determine function. Since classical ideas of being may no longer be persuasive, I introduce another approach to uncover librarianship's function that still meets all of the criteria needed to establish a foundation for a system of virtue ethics. This approach is hermeneutical phenomenology, the philosophical discipline of interpreting the meaning given to historical events. Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutic circle technique and Paul Ricoeur's theory of narrative intelligence are used to engage in a dialogue with three crises in the history of American librarianship. These pivotal events are the fiction question, librarian nationalism during World War I, and the dispute between supporters of the "Library Bill of Rights" and social responsibility. From these crises, three recurring themes become apparent: the tendency to reconcile idealism and pragmatism, the intent to do good for individuals and society, and the role of professional insecurity in precipitating the conflicts. Through emplotment of these themes, an identity narrative for librarianship emerges. My finding is that librarianship's function is the promotion of stability-happiness. This is the dual-process of supporting dominant socio-cultural institutions as a means of protecting librarianship's ability to offer the knowledge, cultural records, and avenues for information literacy that can improve lives and facilitate individuals' pursuit of happiness. In the conclusion, the ethical implications of having stability-happiness as the profession's function are considered. It includes a discussion of how librarianship's narrative identity could be applied to develop an ethical character for the profession and how such a character, combined with knowledge of function, might address persistent problems of race and gender disparity in library and information science.</p>

<p> I consider the claims made by medical ethicists that funding by pharmaceutical companies threaten the integrity of medical research and the claims of philosophers of science that evidence-based medicine can provide a sound epistemic foundation on which to base medical treatment decisions. Drawing on both game theory and medical history, I argue that both medical ethicists and philosophers of science have missed crucial aspects of medical research. I show that both veritistic and commercial aims are enduring and entrenched aspects of medical research. Because these two drives are perpetually pulling medical research in different directions, I identify the resultant conflict as the fundamental antagonism </p><p> The primary task of the dissertation is to provide a framework that incorporates both drivers of medical research. Specifically, I argue that medical research is best conceived of as an asymmetric arms race. Such a dynamic is typified by a series of moves and countermoves between competing parties who are adjusting to one another's behavior, in this case between those who seek to make medical practice more responsive to good evidence and those whose primary motivations are instead commercial in character. </p><p> Such a model presents three challenges to standard evidential hierarchies which equate epistemic reliability with methodological rigor. The first is to show that reliability and rigor can (and do) come apart as a result of the countermeasures employed by manufactures. This fact suggests that in considering policy proposals to improve epistemic reliability, it is robustness (i.e. resistance to manipulation) that should be the crucial desideratum. The second consequence is a reorientation of medical epistemology. One of the primary strategies that manufacturers have employed is to manipulate the dissemination of information. A focus on an isolated knower obscures the impact that industry has in shaping what information is available. To address these problems medical knowledge must be understood from a social epistemological framework. Finally, and most importantly, the arms race account suggests that the goal of identifying the perfect experimental design or inference pattern is chimerical. There is no final resolution to the fundamental antagonism between commercial and scientific forces. There is only a next move.</p>

This thesis investigates the political scientific implications of the postulate that political actors behave as if they were Rational (i.e., Economic) Men. The basic aim of the theoretical discussion is to explain both the existence and substance of norms of social cooperation. Rational Men would cooperate under special circumstances constituting a "coordination problem." Depending on the details of the situation, they would organize their cooperative efforts through either social processes of mutual adjustment or political-legal processes. The substance of the code of political morality Rational Men would embrace combines an Aggregative Principle that total goods available to society as a whole be maximized and a distributive Works Principle that each individual should prosper according to his own works. The results of this theoretical analysis are subjected to two extended empirical tests. The first is whether the Rational Man code of political morality corresponds in essential respects to the norms of political morality as revealed by linguistic analysis. The second test utilizes both of the theoretical arguments to explain the politics of environmental protection. The Rational Man model can explain the fact of pollution, the demand for governmental intervention, the opposition of some men to such inter- vention, the details of environmental protection laws and the shape of the international dispute.

<p> This thesis considers the prospects for including respect for patient autonomy as a value in veterinary medical ethics. Chapter One considers why philosophers have traditionally denied autonomy to animals and why this is problematic; I also present contemporary accounts of animal ethics that recognize animals&rsquo; capacity for and exercise of autonomy (or something similar, such as agency) as morally important. In Chapter Two, I review veterinary medical ethics today, finding that respect for patient autonomy is undiscussed or rejected outright as irrelevant. Extrapolating mainstream medical ethics&rsquo; account of autonomy to veterinary medicine upholds this conclusion, as it would count all patients as &ldquo;never-competent&rdquo; and consider determining their autonomous choices impossible; thus welfare alone would be relevant. Chapter Three begins, in Part I, by describing the ways we routinely override patient autonomy in veterinary practice, both in terms of <i>which</i> interventions are selected and <i>how</i> care is delivered. I also show that some trends in the field suggest a nascent, implicit respect for patient autonomy. Part II of Chapter Three presents feminist criticisms of the mainstream approach to patient autonomy. I argue that the relational approach to autonomy advocated by such critics can be meaningfully applied in the veterinary realm. I advance an approach that conceives respect for patient autonomy in diachronic and dialogic terms, taking the patient as the foremost locus of respect. In Chapter Four, I turn to issues of practical implementation, such as interpreting what constitutes an animal&rsquo;s values and concerns, and assessing the effect of positive reinforcement training on autonomy. The Conclusion offers areas for future research while refuting the objection that a simpler, expanded welfare-based approach would yield the same substantive recommendations as my account.</p><p>

<p> This study explored relationships between national culture and generalized disposition to trust. Cultural differences were assessed using Hofstede&rsquo;s (2001) dimensions of national culture: power distance (PDI), individualism (IDV), masculinity (MAS) and uncertainty avoidance (UAI). Trust was operationalized as four disaggregated subconstructs in McKnight, et al.,&rsquo;s (2002) foundations of trust model: generalized benevolence belief (GBB), generalized integrity belief (GIB), generalized competence belief (GCB) and trusting stance. The research question considered whether generalized disposition to trust is a culture bound construct or a function of individual difference. Surveys were administered to graduate business students in Poland, United States, and Uruguay between May and September 2012. A levels-of-analysis approach utilized qualitative analysis to explore relationships across country borders; quantitative, individual-level analysis to explore relationships within specific countries. Significant differences were found among the three countries on all four dimensions of culture and three trust subconstructs. Comparisons of national culture to disaggregated dimensions of trust revealed a complex pattern of relationships: PDI and MAS showed negative relationships with GIB and positive relationships with GCB. IDV had a negative relationship with GCB. UAI revealed negative relationships with both GBB and GIB. PDI displayed a negative relationship with GBB among Uruguayan students and a positive relationship with TS among Polish students. UAI showed a negative relationship with three dimensions of trust (GBB, GIB and GCB) among Uruguayan students. Findings suggest elements of trust may be differentially bound to national culture and individual difference, with relationships dependent upon the cultural dimension, trust subconstructs and method of analysis.</p>

Thesis--Hessischen Ludwigs-Universität zu Giessen. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [3]-[5]).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2006. / Thesis directed by Michael Zuckert for the Department of Political Science. "April 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 314-321).

This thesis applies T.M. Scanlon's version of contractualism to the problem of future generations. I begin by analyzing Rawls' contractarian account of just savings and find that there is no plausible composition of the original position that can deal with the inclusion of future people. I then examine Scanlon's contractualism and some objections to it before moving on to applying it to future people. I argue that the disanalogies between the intra- and inter-generational contexts do not preclude including future people in the contractualist framework, and that the theory avoids the non-identity problem. Part II of the thesis applies contractualism to three intergenerational topics and develops principles governing them: resource conservation, procreation, and population size. To conclude, I address how to deal with the fact that, in the case of future generations, we often have imperfect knowledge of what they will need, how our actions will affect them, and how many of them there will be.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Political Science, December 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.