There are several active focus groups (listed below). The Innovation Group working to create the OSU Center for Ethics and Human Values is actively seeking faculty who wish to become involved in these groups. OSU faculty who are interested in learning more about any of these groups should contact the group leader.
AWASH: Animal Worlds in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities
Group Leaders: Tom Hawkins and Amy Youngs
Description: The AWASH Focus Group seeks to promote inquiry into the nature, status, and experiences of nonhuman animals by bringing together scholars and practitioners working in multiple fields of study. A working assumption of the group is that nonhuman as well as human animals are located at the intersection of what Jerome Kagan, updating C.P. Snow, has described as the three cultures—the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Thus, although research and practice in the arts and humanities cannot exhaustively characterize nonhuman animals or their relationship with humans, by the same token it will be impossible to engage fully with the domain of the nonhuman unless traditions of inquiry in philosophy, art and art history, comparative literature, narrative studies, and other relevant fields can be brought into dialogue with animal-related research in the biosciences and the social sciences. Equally crucial is a consideration of how discoveries emerging from this "transdisciplinary" approach to animals might bear on questions about the legal rights, privileges, and protections that should be extended to nonhuman beings. AWASH aims to become a forum for discussing issues whose exploration will require the combined insights of all three of Kagan's cultures. Among other topics the group will consider humans' treatment of and attitudes toward animals, cultural and artistic representations of animals, the problem of how to relate biological understandings of animals to sociological and psychological understandings, and ethical and legal questions arising from these domains of practice and inquiry.
To get involved, please email David Herman, Amy Youngs, or Tom Hawkins.
Democratic Governance
Group Leaders: Eric MacGilvray and Piers Turner
Description: Democracy has been thought of as a form of government and as a way of life. In both institutional and moral respects, our commitment to democracy raises a number of important theoretical and practical questions - not least among them the question of how best to conceive of democracy itself. This focus group will be organized around a number of important issues that arise in the study of democratic governance and democratic citizenship, including normative and empirical theories of democracy; aggregative, deliberative and agonistic approaches to democratic decision-making; participatory and elite theories of democratic citizenship; the moral foundations of democratic legitimacy; the challenges that diversity and complexity pose for democratic rule; and the process of transition from authoritarian to democratic regimes. The group will also examine the insights that historically significant democratic thinkers and movements have to shed on contemporary problems of democratic governance and citizenship. It is hoped that through regular meetings this group will establish a venue for wide-ranging, interdisciplinary discussion of the challenges facing modern democratic societies.
To get involved, please email Eric MacGilvray or Piers Turner
Justice and Health
Group Leaders: Pam Salsberry and Mariko Nakano-Okuno
Description: Issues of justice lay at the heart of many of the problems facing society’s efforts to improve the health of its people. Unbiased distribution of benefits and burdens, impartial treatment of the members in a local or a global community, fair procedures of handling social dilemmas, and determining what is right or wrong in general, are the topics of justice.
Within the delivery system we are faced with the challenge of reforming a health care system that even though large number of individuals are excluded the current system is not sustainable because of the cost; there are questions of how best to distribute the benefits and burdens within the current system; and there are questions as to how changes in care strategies, i.e., “personalized care”, can be implemented fairly. Professional practice issues are plentiful and range from moral virtues and values of health care professionals to cultural competency. In the area of research, there are fundamental questions about the responsible conduct of research and the scholarly integrity required to move the science of health forward.
The ideal of justice is crucial to a morally justifiable resolution to these health-related problems and is best achieved through input from a variety of disciplinary perspectives including health sciences, economics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, law, and more. The Justice and Health group will explore how broad questions of justice, the scope of public morality and the meta-ethics of equality, fairness and well –being help solve the practical problems of contemporary health practice, policy, and education.
To get involved, please email Pam Salsberry or Mariko Nakano-Okuno
Morality and the Emotions
Group Leader: Justin D'Arms
Description: Moral values and emotional responses are clearly interpenetrating. On one hand, our beliefs about what sorts of actions are wrong or shameful strongly influence our tendencies to emotions such as anger, guilt, shame and contempt. On the other hand, emotions often precede evaluative beliefs, and sometimes seem to explain why we make the intuitive evaluative judgments that we do. These familiar facts raise a number of questions, such as: To what extent should the fact that human moral intuitions are often driven by emotions undermine our confidence in moral principles and moral reasoning? Can we improve our moral thinking by becoming more aware of underlying emotional influences? Can abstract moral conclusions such as the view that humans are fundamentally equal, or that we need to be consistent in our moral thinking, be used to regulate our emotional responses so as to bring them into line with our moral views? If so, what are the psychological processes by which such regulation could occur, and are these processes that can or should be encouraged? Or should our moral views instead be revised so as to bring them into line with our emotions? Are there principled grounds for distinguishing between emotional contributions to moral thought that improve it and those that corrupt it? This interdisciplinary group will meet to discuss readings that advance our thinking about issues such as these. I am already aware of various articles by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists that are pertinent, and I look forward to hearing suggestions from others to expand the fields from which readings might be drawn.
To get involved, please email Justin D'Arms