In “Revive and Refuse,” Marshall et al. (2024) argue that many individuals who are revived from opioid overdoses have diminished decision-making capacity (DMC), given that so many of them have opio...

This article explores the synthesis between the theories and practice of Humanistic Management and Self-Determination Theory of Motivation (SDT). Moving from Economistic to Humanistic Management involves considering human action as uniting internal and external dimensions, having ethics as a guide for a good life, viewing society as a community of people, and being open to beauty and transcendence. The recently elucidated 50-year legacy of SDT describes it as a truly human science of motivation that takes into consideration our attributes as (...) persons, including our capacities for awareness and self-regulation. It also focuses on one’s capacity for autonomy as it applies to individual functioning, interpersonal relationships, and societal interactions. SDT posits a continuum of motivational regulation ranging from amotivation through controlled to autonomous motivation. The current empirical study of Millennials' motivation to support local and global hunger charities based on social media communication employs the complete SDT continuum. Digitalization and globalization have fundamentally changed the nature of human communication. Millennials are central to the humanistic functioning of today’s society. The study findings of the dominance of integrated personal value autonomy demonstrates the necessity of assessing the complete set of SDT motivations in various contexts and situations. Given that SDT and Humanistic Management investigations have mainly involved corporations, one must also be open to investigating the humanistic management of non-profit social and governmental organizations. The non-greenwashed triple sustainability values of corporate, social and environmental good are pertinent targets for Humanistic Management research and Practices. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The notion of stakeholder salience based on attributes (e.g., power, legitimacy, urgency) is applied in the family business setting. We argue that where principal institutions intersect (i.e., family and business); managerial perceptions of stakeholder salience will be different and more complex than where institutions are based on a single dominant logic. We propose that (1) whereas utilitarian power is more likely in the general business case, normative power is more typical in family business stakeholder salience; (2) whereas in a general (...) business context legitimacy is socially constructed; for family stakeholders, legitimacy is based on heredity; and (3) whereas temporality and criticality are somewhat independent in general-business urgency, they are linked in the family business case because of family ties and family-centered non-economic goals. We apply this theoretical framework to position and integrate the contributions to this special section ofBusiness Ethics Quarterlyon “Stakeholder Theory, Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Family Enterprise.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The notion of stakeholder salience based on attributes (e.g., power, legitimacy, urgency) is applied in the family business setting. We argue that where principal institutions intersect (i.e., family and business); managerial perceptions of stakeholder salience will be different and more complex than where institutions are based on a single dominant logic. We propose that (1) whereas utilitarian power is more likely in the general business case, normative power is more typical in family business stakeholder salience; (2) whereas in a general (...) business context legitimacy is socially constructed; for family stakeholders, legitimacy is based on heredity; and (3) whereas temporality and criticality are somewhat independent in general-business urgency, they are linked in the family business case because of family ties and family-centered non-economic goals. We apply this theoretical framework to position and integrate the contributions to this special section ofBusiness Ethics Quarterlyon “Stakeholder Theory, Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Family Enterprise.”. (shrink)

Students’ educational engagement is both an important predictor of study success and a key preventive factor for dropout. Vocational tracks in secondary education show high dropout rates. There is strong evidence that the solution to educational disengagement lies in student‐centred, powerful learning environments. This study investigates characteristics of PLEs from the perspective of students in vocational secondary education. Students’ perspectives on a learning environment are crucial for their satisfaction and learning engagement. Therefore, we investigated whether the perceived learning environment meets (...) the requirements of PLEs, and to what extent it meets students’ preferences. Additionally, it was investigated whether students who perceive their learning environment as more powerful, are also more engaged for school. Survey data of 532 students showed that student perceptions of their current learning environment were largely discrepant from the characteristics of PLEs. Students strongly asked for more challenging learning pathways, in combination with adaptive learning support. Students who perceived the characteristics of PLEs as being present, reported higher satisfaction and stronger engagement than students who perceived their education to be a less powerful environment. There is a need to redesign curricula in vocational education in such a way that these more intensely implement characteristics of PLEs. (shrink)

We revisit Naturalized Epistemology and the Law of Evidence, published twenty years ago. The evolution of the relative plausibility theory of juridical proof is offered as evidence of the advantage of a naturalized approach to the study of the field and law evidence. Various alternative explanations of aspects of juridical proof from other disciplines are examined and their shortcomings described. These competing explanations are similar in their reductive, a priori approaches that are at odds with an empirically oriented naturalized approach. (...) The shortcomings of the various a priori approaches are driven by their common methodological commitments to employing weird hypotheticals to engage in intuition mining about the American legal systems that in turn ignore important aspects of the actual legal systems and consistently make impossible epistemological demands. As a result, both their descriptions of and prescriptions for American legal systems are implausible, unlike the relative plausibility theory. (shrink)

Legal scholarship exploring the nature of evidence and the process of juridical proof has had a complex relationship with formal modeling. As evident in so many fields of knowledge, algorithmic approaches to evidence have the theoretical potential to increase the accuracy of fact finding, a tremendously important goal of the legal system. The hope that knowledge could be formalized within the evidentiary realm generated a spate of articles attempting to put probability theory to this purpose. This literature was both insightful (...) and frustrating. Much light was shed on the legal system, but it also quickly became evident that the tools of probability theory were in many ways ill-constructed for the task. Fundamental incompatibilities between the structure of legal decision making and the extant formal tools were identified, and it became evident that many of the purported explanations of legal phenomena were internally inconsistent. As a consequence, interest in this type of formal modeling declined, and attention was directed toward different kinds of explanations of the phenomena. Perhaps under the influence of a recent trend toward various types of formal modeling in legal scholarship, a recent burst of articles, rather than attempting to explain the macro structure of trials, which was the previous object of interest, attempts to quantify the probative value of various items of evidence in ways consistent with the formal features of various probability theories, and then to study decision making from that perspective. For example, the value of evidence is often purported to be its likelihood ratio, that is, the probability of discovering or receiving the evidence given a hypothesis (e.g., the defendant did it) divided by the probability of discovering or receiving the evidence given the negation of the hypothesis (the defendant didn't do it). Alternatively, the value of evidence is purported (more contextually) to be the information gain it provides, defined as the increase in probability it provides for a hypothesis above the probability of the hypothesis based on the other available evidence. Both conceptions then assume that all of the various probability assessments conform or ought to conform to the dictates of Bayes' theorem (that maintains consistency among such assessments); empirical studies are then done testing the extent to which this is so and proposing how the law can increase the probability that it is so. The general criticisms of using Bayes' theorem as a formal model of juridical proof are well known and were integral to the last wave of interest in formal modeling of the evidentiary process. This paper thus for the most part puts aside that more general issue, and focuses specifically on mathematical modeling of the value of particular items of evidence. The paper demonstrates that formal modeling has only limited value in explaining the value of legal evidence, much more limited than those constructing and discussing the models assume, and thus that the conclusions they draw about the value of evidence are unwarranted. This is done through a discussion of four recent examples that attempt to quantify evidence relating to, respectively, carpet fibers, infidelity, DNA random-match evidence, and character evidence used to impeach a witness. This article thus makes two contributions. First, and most importantly, it is another demonstration of the complex relationship between algorithmic tools and legal decision making. Second, at a minimum it points out serious pitfalls for analytical or empirical studies of juridical proof. (shrink)

When looking at a scene, observers feel that they see its entire structure in great detail and can immediately notice any changes in it. However, when brief blank fields are placed between alternating displays of an original and a modified scene, a striking failure of perception is induced: identification of changes becomes extremely difficult, even when changes are large and made repeatedly. Identification is much faster when a verbal cue is provided, showing that poor visibility is not the cause of (...) this difficulty. Identification is also faster for objects mentioned in brief verbal descriptions of the scene. These results support the idea that observers never form a complete, detailed representation of their surroundings. In addition, results also indicate that attention is required to perceive change, and that in the absence of localized motion signals it is guided on the basis of high-level interest. (shrink)

This brief essay explores how understanding the treatment of expert evidence requires engaging with its legal and political contexts, and not just focusing on its epistemological aspects. Although the law of evidence and thus its treatment of experts is significantly informed by epistemological considerations, it is also informed by concerns over the organization of trials, larger issues of intelligent governance, social concerns, and enforcement issues. These five aspects to the law of evidence give rise to principles to guide the explicit (...) structuring of the law of evidence that are identified here as well. This complexity helps to explain why the central issue of expert testimony is not the epistemological one of knowledge and belief but instead the conflict between educational and deferential modes of trial. (shrink)

The probabilistic account of juridical proof meets insurmountable problems. A better explanation of juridical proof is that it is a form of inference to the best explanation that involves the comparative plausibility of the parties’ stories. In addition, discrete evidentiary matters such as relevance and probative value are also best understood as involving inference to the best explanation rather than being probabilistic.

While ethicists have directed much attention to controversial biomedical issues--including euthanasia, abortion, and genetic engineering--they have largely ignored the less obvious, but more pervasive, everyday ethical problems faced by family physicians. Ethical Issues in Family Medicine addresses these problems, offering an ethics that reflects the distinctive features of family practice, and helping family physicians to appreciate the extent to which ethical issues influence their practice.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

The probabilistic account of juridical proof meets insurmountable problems. A better explanation of juridical proof is that it is a form of inference to the best explanation that involves the comparative plausibility of the parties’ stories. In addition, discrete evidentiary matters such as relevance and probative value are also best understood as involving inference to the best explanation rather than being probabilistic.

De nos jours existe un extraordinaire engouement pour les sciences du cerveau qui captivent de plus en plus de penseurs. Des philosophes americains encouragent leurs pairs a s'initier aux neurosciences. Des hommes de science, conscients des enjeux metaphysiques inherents a leur domaine, invitent les philosophes a decouvrir les faits nouveaux apportes par les decouvertes sur le systeme nerveux. Il parait donc legitime que le philosophe soit concerne par les developpements recents des sciences du cerveau. Par la diversite des points de (...) vus et des perspectives, le present recueil souhaite contribuer a eclairer, dans la mesure du possible, quelques-unes des questions inherentes aux interactions entre la philosophie et les neurosciences. (shrink)

A “national security–centric” approach currently dominates cybersecurity policies and practices. Derived from a realist theory of world politics in which states compete with each other for survival and relative advantage, the principal cybersecurity threats are conceived as those affecting sovereign states, such as damage to critical infrastructure within their territorial jurisdictions. As part of a roundtable on “Competing Visions for Cyberspace,” this essay presents an alternative approach to cybersecurity that is derived from the tradition of “human security.” Rather than prioritizing (...) territorial sovereignty, this approach prioritizes the individual, and views networks as part of the essential foundation for the modern exercise of human rights, such as access to information, freedom of thought, and freedom of association. The foundational elements of a human-centric approach to cybersecurity are outlined and contrasted with the prevailing trends around national security–centric practices. A human-centric approach strives for indivisible network security on a planetary scale for the widest possible scope of human experience, and seeks to ensure that such principles are vigorously monitored and defended by multiple and overlapping forms of independent oversight and review. (shrink)

Modeling work by Brian Skyrms and others in recent years has transformed the theoretical role of David Lewis's 1969 model of signaling. The latter can now be understood as a minimal model of communication in all its forms. In this article, we explain how the Lewis model has been generalized, and consider how it and its variants contribute to ongoing debates in several areas. Specifically, we consider connections between the models and four topics: The role of common interest in communication, (...) signaling within the organism, meaning, and the evolution of human communication and language. (shrink)

The arbitrariness of a signal has long been seen as a theoretically important but difficult to pin down notion. In this article, we suggest there are at least two different notions of arbitrariness at play in philosophical and scientific debates concerning the use of arbitrary signals, and work towards improved analyses of both. We then consider how these different types of arbitrariness can co-occur and come apart. Finally, we examine the connections between these two types of arbitrariness and the cognitive (...) complexity of signal users with an eye towards better evaluating one possible form of human-nonhuman communicative continuity. We show that each type of arbitrariness bears its own nuanced relationship to cognitive complexity, demonstrating the theoretical importance of keeping these two notions separate. (shrink)

When brief blank fields are placed between alternating displays of an original and a modified scene, a striking failure of perception is induced: the changes become extremely difficult to notice, even when they are large, presented repeatedly, and the observer expects them to occur (Rensink, O'Regan, & Clark, 1997). To determine the mechanisms behind this induced "change blindness", four experiments examine its dependence on initial preview and on the nature of the interruptions used. Results support the proposal that representations at (...) the early stages of visual processing are highly volatile, and that focused attention is needed to stabilize them sufficiently to support the perception of change. (shrink)

In many traditional, small-scale societies, death and other misfortunes are commonly explained as a result of others’ malign occult agency. Here, we call this family of epistemic tendencies “the agential view of misfortune.” After reviewing several ethnographic case studies that illustrate this view, we argue that its origins and stability are puzzling from an evolutionary perspective. Not only is the agential view of misfortune false; it imposes costs on individuals and social groups that seem to far outweigh whatever benefits the (...) view might provide. We thus doubt that the agential view of misfortune is explainable in terms of adaptive effects. However, neither does it seem readily explainable as a consequence of belief formation strategies that are on the whole adaptive (as is plausibly the case for certain other of our false beliefs, including some that are costly). Accordingly, we contend that the commonness of the agential view of misfortune demands a special evolutionary explanation of some kind. We provide a partial explanation of this phenomenon by highlighting the adaptive benefits that often flow to occult specialists in environments where the agential view of misfortune is entrenched. What this does not explain, however, is the general lack of resistance we observe in response to occultists’ exploitative behaviours over (cultural) evolutionary timescales. We conclude by canvassing a few possible explanations for this puzzling lack of resistance, and while we commit ourselves to none, we do find one option more promising than the others. (shrink)

Business schools have a responsibility to incorporate applied business ethics courses as part of their undergraduate and MBA curriculum. The purpose of this article is to take a background and historical look at reasons for the new emphasis on ethical coursework in business schools. The article suggests a prescription for undergraduate and graduate education in applied business ethics and explores in detail the need to increase applied business ethics courses in business schools to enhance the ethical development of students.

According to one currently influential line of thinking, the evolution of ostensive communication was a prerequisite for the evolution of human language. In this article, I distinguish between a strong and a weak version of this view and offer a sustained argument against the former. More specifically, the strong version of this view would have it that ostensive communication was a prerequisite not just for the evolution of fully modern language but for any language-like system of communication. I argue that (...) this version is too strong: I show how some distinctive and important features of language may well have been assembled prior to the evolution of ostensive communication. Put another way, I argue that a protolanguage before ostensive communication scenario is a real possibility. I conclude by briefly arguing that such an evolutionary scenario coheres better with archaeological evidence from the early Pleistocene as well as evidence from developmental psychology pertaining to the nature of our mind reading abilities. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of whether early Pleistocene hominins are plausibly viewed as having possessed a protolanguage, that is, a communication system exemplifying some but not all of the distinctive features of fully modern human language. I argue that the answer is “yes,” mounting evidence from the early Pleistocene “lithics niche.” More specifically, I first describe a cognitive platform that I think would have been sufficient, given appropriate socio-ecological conditions, for the creation and retention of a protolanguage. Then, using (...) archaeological evidence pertaining to hominin lithic behavior from the early Pleistocene, I attempt to make plausible the idea that each of these cognitive abilities were in fact in place by this point in hominin evolutionary history and also that the requisite socio-ecological conditions were satisfied. (shrink)

In the management and business ethics literatures, stakeholder engagement has been demonstrated to lead to more ethical management practices. However, there may be limits on the extent to which stakeholder engagement can, as currently conceptualized, resolve some of the more difficult ethical challenges faced by managers. In this paper we argue that stakeholder engagement, when seen as a way of reducing five types of knowledge problems—risk, ambiguity, complexity, equivocality, and a priori irreducible uncertainty—can aid managers in resolving such ethical challenges. (...) Using a practical illustration of the ethical challenges surrounding the development and application of genetic modification technologies, we demonstrate how stakeholder engagement enables managers to better address these knowledge problems, thereby to manage more ethically. In this way, we suggest that stakeholder engagement has an even more crucial role to play in business ethics research and practice. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human (...) history. (shrink)

Using the emerging technology of large-scale textual analysis, this study examines the use of the term ‘customer satisfaction’ and its variants in the annual reports issued by publicly traded U.S. corporations and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Form 10-K. We document the frequency of the term’s occurrence in 10-Ks over the 1995–2013 period and the differences in usage across industries. We then relate the term’s usage in 10-Ks to subsequent scores from the American Customer Satisfaction Index to (...) determine whether management’s discussion of customer satisfaction in financial disclosures is credible. The commitment of management to shareholders versus, more broadly, stakeholders is a central question in business ethics, and the integrity of management communication is a fundamental construct in the American Marketing Association’s Statement of Ethics. We document a complex relation between management’s discussion of customer satisfaction and subsequently reported satisfaction. We find that the general use of customer satisfaction in 10-K documents is negatively correlated with subsequent ACSI scores. However, for retail firms, when the phrase is located near words indicating measurement or monitoring of the phenomenon, the empirical relation is reversed and becomes positive. (shrink)

This article discusses feminist self-defense as a victim-prevention strategy, describes the nature and scope of the self-defense movement, examines a case history of a women's self-defense organization, and analyzes the mobilization and organizational dilemmas that confronted that organization. We compare self-defense services with victim services to help explain the development of the women's self-defense movement, and in particular, its feminist component.

In October of 2009, Trevor Keezer was terminated by Home Depot for refusing to remove a pin from his uniform declaring “One Nation under God, Indivisible.” Mr. Keezer, a cashier with Home Depot, contended that the button he had worn for over one year before any action was taken by his employer expressed his support for American troops and his Christian faith. Were the actions taken by his employer warranted or was Mr. Keezer the victim of arbitrary religious discrimination unrelated (...) to job performance? Religion is becoming an increasingly polarizing issue in the workplace, forcing retail managers to balance the respective interests of employees, coworkers, and patrons of retail establishments. And from all indications, if legislation pending in Congress is enacted, maintaining the balance will become more problematic. (shrink)

Following a series of national protests in support of an increase in the federal minimum wage, many fast food workers faced retaliation by their employers when they returned to work; schedules were changed, wages and hours were reduced, and some employees were terminated. These retaliatory actions resulted in a number of complaints being filed with the National Labor Relations Board alleging violations of the National Labor Relations Act. Several of the complaints were found to have merit and, additionally, in several (...) instances both the immediate employer, the franchisee, and the corporate organization of which it was a part, the franchisor, were named as co‐defendants. This ruling—that franchisors like McDonald’s USA—could be held jointly responsible for the labor violations of independent franchisees reversed a long‐standing precedent, whereby franchisees were regarded as independent contractors solely responsible for day‐to‐day labor practices, including compliance with federal and state labor statutes. Critics of the ruling argue that it will open the door to unionization and may well spell the end of the service‐sponsor franchising format. Supporters of the NLRB argue that the ruling is just and reflects new “industrial realities” in retail labor markets. Further, a case can be made that the NLRB’s position represents a step in the direction of the restoration of more equitable balance of power between labor and management. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn April of 2000, Diana Levine went to a clinic in Vermont suffering from a migraine headache. She was given the drug Demerol for the migraine symptoms and Phenergan for nausea. Complications with the administration of Phenergan ultimately resulted in Ms. Levine contracting gangrene, necessitating the amputation of her right arm. Ms. Levine sued the drug maker, Wyeth Pharmaceutical, in state court and prevailed. The lower court's decision was appealed by Wyeth to the state supreme court where the ruling was (...) confirmed. Wyeth next appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which, to the surprise of many observers, affirmed the judgment of the state supreme court. At issue was the fundamental question of the ability of consumers to obtain redress against negligent manufacturers in state courts. Wyeth's arguments to the Court were based upon preemption: Foodand Drug Administration approval of a drug preempts the ability of injured consumers like Ms. Levine to recover in state courts despite years of precedent to the contrary. Ability to recover damages in state courts represents, perhaps, the most important safety net available to consumers injured by defective products. A ruling by the Supreme Court that FDA‐approved labeling of pharmaceuticals preempts the reach of the state courts would have severely compromised the balance of power between consumers and producers. (shrink)

Forty years ago, Vaughn Ball demonstrated that the then received notion of conditional relevance served no useful purpose, as it would only come into effect if the probability of an element were 0.0. But, if the probability of an element were 0.0, a directed verdict would be in order and so once again conditional relevancy was doing no work. I extended that analysis to include the relationship between proffers of evidence and facts of consequence to demonstrate that the work that (...) conditional relevancy was supposedly doing was isomorphic to that done by relevancy in all significant ways, and yet the Federal Rules of Evidence provide different standards for the two situations to determine admissibility. I thus proposed an amendment to FRE 104(b) to provide for the same standard to be applied to ‘relevancy’ and ‘conditional relevancy’. In a recent article, Matthew Kotzen appears to subject this work to intense scrutiny and criticism, yet at the same time reaches, so far as I can tell, identical conclusions. This raises the question, which I examine, whether this is an example of cross-disciplinary difficulties in communication. (shrink)