Whether firms can be said to be moral agents and to have the capacity for moral responsibility has significant practical consequences. In most legal systems in the world, business firms are recognized as persons with the ability to own property, to maintain and defend lawsuits, and to self-organize governance structures. To recognize that these business persons can also act morally or immorally as organizations, however, would justify the imposition of other legal constraints and normative expectations on organizations. In the criminal (...) law, for example, the idea that an organized firm may itself have criminal culpability is accepted in many countries (such as the United States) but rejected in others (such as Germany). This book collects new contributions by leading business scholars in business ethics, philosophy, and related disciplines to extend our understanding of the moral responsibility of firms. (shrink)

Background: Legislation on physician-assisted suicide is being considered in a number of states since the passage of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act in 1994. Opinion assessment surveys have historically assessed particular subsets of physicians.Objective: To determine variables predictive of physicians’ opinions on PAS in a rural state, Vermont, USA.Design: Cross-sectional mailing survey.Participants: 1052 physicians licensed by the state of Vermont.Results: Of the respondents, 38.2% believed PAS should be legalised, 16.0% believed it should be prohibited and 26.0% believed it should (...) not be legislated. 15.7% were undecided. Males were more likely than females to favour legalisation . Physicians who did not care for patients through the end of life were significantly more likely to favour legalisation of PAS than physicians who do care for patients with terminal illness . 30% of the respondents had experienced a request for assistance with suicide.Conclusions: Vermont physicians’ opinions on the legalisation of PAS is sharply polarised. Patient autonomy was a factor strongly associated with opinions in favour of legalisation, whereas the sanctity of the doctor–patient relationship was strongly associated with opinions in favour of not legislating PAS. Those in favour of making PAS illegal overwhelmingly cited moral and ethical beliefs as factors in their opinion. Although opinions on legalisation appear to be based on firmly held beliefs, approximately half of Vermont physicians who responded to the survey agree that there is a need for more education in palliative care and pain management. (shrink)

The integration of digital phenotyping in psychiatry promises unprecedented insights into mental health, particularly in college settings where mental well-being is a growing concern. The COVID-19...

What critical characteristics do firms have that determine the scale and scope of corporate social responsibility activities they undertake? This paper examines two disparate predictors of corporate social performance. First, using the lens of the resource-based view, we examine the role of alliance network centrality on corporate social performance. We find that centrality enhances corporate social performance. Second, we investigate how board composition affects corporate social performance. Specifically, drawing on stakeholder theory, we find that the percentage of female directors predicts (...) greater corporate social performance. In addition, we look at the influence of outside directors on this relationship. Our findings show that the presence of more outside directors positively moderates the relationship between female directors and corporate social performance. (shrink)

From late 1684 through mid-1685, Isaac Newton turned to developing and refining the conceptual foundations presupposed by his emerging physics. Analysis of his manuscripts from this period reveals that Newton’s understanding of the relativity of acceleration led him to seek a spatiotemporally invariant quantity of matter. He found two such quantities and then designed an experiment to discover their relationship. Interpreting the experiment, however, required distinguishing a new notion of force. Others have recognized the conceptual distinction between inertial and gravitational (...) mass. I show here that Newton clearly saw this distinction and that he provisionally established their equivalence. (shrink)

In an influential series of papers, Cleland (2001, 2002, 2011) argued that historical natural scientists employ a distinctive methodology—which exploits Lewis (1979)s asymmetry of over determination—that is capable of putting knowledge of the deep past on an epistemic par with experimental knowledge. Currie (2018) clarified the nature of the asymmetry claim and used it to argue for a more restricted form of optimism toward the historical sciences. This optimism is licensed by the evidential redundancy that the asymmetry of over determination (...) guarantees.In this chapter I show that the argument for the asymmetry of over determination is circular and the thesis is false. Over determination toward the past is smuggled in from the start by ruling out of consideration so-called backtracking counterfactuals. By banning backtracking counterfactuals, consideration is restricted to possible worlds in which the over determination thesis holds. But in the actual world, the present is compatible with many different histories. (shrink)

Andrews et al. attempt to clarify the standards for determining whether traits are adaptations. The authors argue that tests of adaptationist hypotheses best proceed by assessing the consistency of the traits with the proposed standards. Critical tests of such standards must assess inconsistency – hypotheses must be falsifiable. To fully understand trait evolution, we must consider both adaptive and nonadaptive hypotheses.

In this article I will identify the position from which I write and the methodology I will employ, and then I will ask: ”Is the Foucauldian conception of disciplinary power still at work in contemporary forms of imprisonment?” I will answer this question in the affirmative and report the results of a case study of the operational philosophy of a contemporary prison in Melbourne Australia while highlighting some key comparative points from Discipline and Punish . How prisoners resist and subvert (...) disciplinary power by turning an inclusive grouping within the prison into a site from which they highly differentiate Self from Other will be touched upon. I will conclude by finding that homo criminalis has in fact become a definite object in the field of knowledge and he is emerging as a product from the machine for altering minds. (shrink)

This is an original and stimulating collection of articles by scholars trained in classics, moral philosophy, political science, literature, and intellectual history. Its principal objective is to convey to the modern reader a sophisticated understanding of Homeric and Classical Greek morality and how it differs from our own. Some of the articles focus primarily on Greek value concepts, especially the concept of arete. Others compare those concepts to modern notions of virtue and tolerance, as well as to the work of (...) contemporary literary figures and philosophers, including T.S. Eliot, Alasdair Macintyre, John Wallace, and Philippa Foot. Throughout, the juxtaposition of ancient and modern ideas and the worldviews they presuppose makes these readings both intellectually exciting and revealing. (shrink)

Both genetic and environmental factors have key roles in determining aggressive tendencies. In particular, reaction to stress appears to be an important factor in precipitating aggressive episodes and individuals may vary in their ability to cope with stressful environments depending on their genetic make up. Evidence from humans and primates indicates that adverse rearing conditions may interact with variants in stress and neurotransmitter pathway genes leading to antisocial and/or violent behaviour. Common alleles of some serotonin pathway genes, including those involved (...) in its degradation (monoamine oxidase A, MAOA), or its re‐uptake into pre‐synaptic neurones (serotonin transporter, SERT) have been shown to confer functional variation. Examination of the interaction between the alleles of such polymorphisms (in particular those affecting MAOA) and environmental stressors suggest that they may provide protection against, or increase sensitivity to, abusive upbringing; an observation that may explain part of the variability in developmental outcomes associated with maltreatment. BioEssays 29: 227–236, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The authors apply the issue life cycle model to analyze the 1999 through 2001 dispute between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the accounting profession concerning auditor independence. The analysis also brings additional insights that extend understanding of the issue life cycle and issues development. This analysis highlights the roles of a trigger event, the shift of an issue from a technical concern to a public debate, and likely recurrence. The reappearance of the auditor independence issue in 2002 with accounting (...) scandals is consistent with the article’s findings and highlights the use of the issue life cycle model and issue evolution. (shrink)

We have synthesized a 582,970-base pair Mycoplasma genitalium genome. This synthetic genome, named M. genitalium JCVI-1.0, contains all the genes of wild-type M. genitalium G37 except MG408, which was disrupted by an antibiotic marker to block pathogenicity and to allow for selection. To identify the genome as synthetic, we inserted "watermarks" at intergenic sites known to tolerate transposon insertions. Overlapping "cassettes" of 5 to 7 kilobases (kb), assembled from chemically synthesized oligonucleotides, were joined by in vitro recombination to produce intermediate (...) assemblies of approximately 24 kb, 72 kb ("1/8 genome"), and 144 kb ("1/4 genome"), which were all cloned as bacterial artificial chromosomes in Escherichia coli. Most of these intermediate clones were sequenced, and clones of all four 1/4 genomes with the correct sequence were identified. The complete synthetic genome was assembled by transformation-associated recombination cloning in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, then isolated and sequenced. A clone with the correct sequence was identified. The methods described here will be generally useful for constructing large DNA molecules from chemically synthesized pieces and also from combinations of natural and synthetic DNA segments. 10.1126/science.1151721. (shrink)