Value (ethics)

About: Value (ethics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 21347 publications have been published within this topic receiving 461372 citations.

Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy

Abstract: This is an ambitious book. It seeks to describe the manner in which the concept of "self" has been defined and experienced in various historical eras in America, to explain how psychotherapy contributed to this concept, and finally to criticize psychotherapy's contributions and argue that it needs to change direction. The author is not completely successful in all these endeavors, but he does succeed in producing an interesting, contentious, and clearly written book. Cushman, a historian and practicing psychologist, lays out his major themes and biases in his first two chapters, which can be summarized by the following passages: "over the last 150 years, American history has become a history of the modern ills of isolation, uncertainty and doubt"; "the current configuration of the self is the empty self... characterized by a pervasive sense of personal emptiness and... committed to the value of self liberation through consumption"; "There seems little

Crisis, value, and hope: rethinking the economy. An introduction to supplement 9

Abstract: Crisis, value, and hope are three concepts whose intersection and mutual constitution open the door for a rethinking of the nature of economic life away from abstract models divorced from the everyday realities of ordinary people, the inadequacies of which the current world economic crisis has exposed in particularly dramatic fashion. This rethinking seeks to bring to center stage the complex ways in which people attempt to make life worth living for themselves and for future generations, involving not only waged labor but also structures of provisioning, investments in social relations, relations of trust and care, and a multitude of other forms of social action that mainstream economic models generally consider trivial, marginal, and often counterproductive. A holistic understanding of how people organize their economic lives is attentive to both the temporality of value and the relationship between different scales of value. It is attentive to the spatial configuration of economic life in many societies in which the future has become synonymous with geographical mobility. It is attentive to the fact that making a living is about making people in their physical, social, spiritual, affective, and intellectual dimensions.

The impact of corporate behavior on perceived product value

Abstract: This research examines how ethical and unethical corporate behavior influence the perceived value of a firm's products, operationalized as the price consumers are willing to pay for that product relative to the competition. We propose that if consumers expect companies to conduct business ethically, then ethical behavior will not be rewarded but unethical behavior will be punished. The results of the first study confirm this expectation. The second study explored ways a firm can improve the perceived value of its products after an unethical act has been committed. Our results indicate that after a firm has committed an unethical act, consumer's perceptions of that company and its products were positively influenced by ethical behavior, corporate philanthropy, and cause-related marketing. However, our analyses revealed that these different strategies varied in their effectiveness. The third study used a choice task, rather than a judgment task, to confirm the finding that corporate behavior does influence perceived product value and is therefore likely to influence market choices. The implications of these findings are discussed.

What's Wrong with Prostitution? Evaluating Sex Work

Abstract: T HI S ARTICLE originated from the recognition of two problems concerning the nature, meaning, value, and circumstances of prostitution within capitalist patriarchy. The first of these problems is the apparent conflict between some sex trade workers and many feminists in regard to the acceptability of prostitution. Women who work in the sex trade industry often feel condemned and rejected by many feminist women. One sex worker, for instance, writes resentfully of "the apparently immutable feminist party-line that [sex] work was degrading and oppressive to women," adding that feminists and sex trade workers "are split into good girls and bad girls-just like society's Good Women and Whores. Only this time the fears of moral inferiority and uncontrollable sexuality are couched in feminist political language."1 This notion is echoed in the anthology published by the Toronto Women's Press, Good Girls/Bad Girls: Sex Trade Workers and Feminists Face to Face, a partial transcript of a 1985 Toronto conference at which Canadian feminists and workers in the sex trade discussed sex work.2 Both great good will and anger are palpable among the participants. The workers did not want others to speak authoritatively about their lives; they resented the assumption that their work was necessarily demeaning and never freely chosen. Instead they defended their "right" to be prostitutes and the value, dignity, and liberty of the work, which

On the value of acting from the motive of duty

Abstract: t has quite reasonably been a source of frustration to sympaI thetic readers that Kant seems to claim that a dutiful action can have moral worth only if it is done from the motive of duty alone. The apparent consequence of this view-that an action cannot have moral worth if there is supporting inclination or desire-is, at the least, troubling as it judges a grudging or resentfully performed dutiful act morally preferable to a similar act done from affection or with pleasure. In a recent article, 1 Richard Henson attempts to take the sting out of this view of Kant on moral worth by arguing (i) that attending to the phenomenon of the overdetermination of actions leads one to see that Kant might have had two distinct views of moral worth, only one of which requires the absence of cooperating inclinations, and (ii) that when Kant insists that there is moral worth only when an action is done from the motive of duty alone, he need not also hold that such a state of affairs is morally better, all things considered, than one where supporting inclination is present. Henson's proposals seem to me both serious and plausible. I do not think that either of his models, in the end, can take on the role Kant assigns to moral worth in the argument of the Groundwork. But seeing the ways Henson's account diverges from Kant's makes clearer what Kant intended in his discussion of those actions he credits with moral worth. Most of the traditional difficulties with Kant's views on moral worth come from not seeing the point of that discussion.