Wed, Mar 28, 2012
Ethics at Noon
Antigone’s Right: Generation and Justice

Kathryn Walker
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Centre for Ethics Undergraduate Fellowships

The Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto, invites enquiries from faculty interested in spending time in residence at the Centre as Visiting Researchers. While such positions carry no financial support in the coming year, Visiting Researchers will be provided with office space, library privileges, as well as modest administrative support, and are warmly encouraged to participate and share their research in seminars and other Centre activities throughout the academic year.

Opportunities to teach on a stipendiary basis in the Ethics, Society and Law undergraduate program at Trinity College, University of Toronto may also be available.

Applications for Visiting Researcher positions for the 2013-14 academic year will begin to be considered as of March 31, 2013, and will continue until all positions are filled. Applications for periods of less than a year will also be considered – offices are typically allocated in four-month blocks, corresponding to the summer (May-August), fall (September-December) or winter term (January-April). In order to apply, please send a cover letter explaining briefly your background and research plans, as well as a copy of your CV, to ethics@utoronto.ca

For further information, please contact:

Rose Jones, Assistant to the Director
Centre for Ethics
University of Toronto
ethics@utoronto.ca

Allen W. Wood
Ruth Norman Halls Professor of Philosophy
Indiana University

Leaving Consequentialism Behind

Monday, March 19, 2012
3:00 – 5:00 pm

Centre for Ethics, Room 200, Larkin Building, 15 Devonshire Place

Wed, Mar 14, 2012
Ethics at Noon
London Calling: How Imaginaries and Ideologies Answer for a Social Explosion

John Grant
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto
Department of Political Science

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Click here for abstract

Self-interest vs. the Common Good: On a Central Issue in Economic Ethics

Manuel Wörsdörfer
Goethe-University Frankfurt
and
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Ethics

Wednesday, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Seminar Series
Discrimination as Negligence

Sophia Reibetanz Moreau
Professor of Philosophy and Law
University of Toronto

Mon, Mar 5, 2012
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Meeting will start at 12:00 noon sharp.

Mark Peacock
York University, Departments of Business and Society, Social and Political Thought
“The Psychological Presuppositions of Capitalism: Ethics and the Market (again)”

Joseph Heath, “Business Ethics and the ‘End of History’ in Corporate Law,” Journal of Business Ethics 106, (2012). Get it here (gated).

Abstract: Henry Hansmann has claimed we have reached the “end of history” in corporate law, organized around the “widespread normative consensus that corporate managers should act exclusively in the economic interests of shareholders.” In this paper, I examine Hansmann’s own argument in support of this view, in order to draw out its implications for some of the traditional concerns of business ethicists about corporate social responsibility. The centerpiece of Hansmann’s argument is the claim that ownership of the firm is most naturally exercised by the group able to achieve the lowest agency costs, and that homogeneity of interest within the ownership group is the most important factor in achieving lower costs. He defends this claim through a study of cooperatives, attempting to show that homogeneity is the source of the competitive advantage most often enjoyed by shareholders over other constituency groups, such as workers, suppliers and customers, when it comes to exercising control over the firm. Some business ethicists, impressed by this argument, have taken it to be a vindication of Milton Friedman’s claim that profit-maximization is the only “social responsibility” of management. I would like to suggest that this conclusion does not follow, and that the “Hansmann argument” lends itself to a less minimalist view, what I refer to as a “market failures” approach to business ethics.

The original date for Prof. Moreau’s talk, February 13th, generated a highly undesirable scheduling conflict with the annual Wright Lecture at the Faculty of Law (details here). Thus it has been rescheduled for Monday, March 5, same time (3-5pm) same place (Larkin 200).

Wed, Feb 8, 2012
Ethics at Noon
Business Ethics as Value Alignment

Chris MacDonald
Saint Mary’s University, Halifax
Department of Philosophy

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

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Wed, Feb 8, 2012
Philosophers for Peace
The Global Gandhian Moment

Ramin Jahanbegloo
Department of Political Science

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Velleman’s Constructivism
Philip Clark
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto

Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 3-5pm.
Room 200, Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place

Useful background reading here.