kerekh 1-2. Maʼamarim rishon ṿe-sheni -- kerekh 3-4. Maʼamarim shelishi u-reviʻi -- kerekh 5. Maʼamar ḥamishi u-firḳe mavo.

Patients with persistent pain who lack adetectable underlying disease challenge thetheories supporting much of biomedicalbody-mind discourse. In this context,diagnostic labeling is as inherently vulnerableto the same pitfalls of uncertainty that besetany other interpretative endeavour. The endpoint is often no more than a name ratherthan the discovered essence of a pre-existentmedical condition. In 1990 a Committee of theAmerican College of Rheumatology (ACR)formulated the construct of Fibromyalgia in anattempt to rectify a situation of diagnosticconfusion faced by patients presenting withwidespread pain. It was (...) proposed thatFibromyalgia existed as a ``specific entity'',separable from but curiously able to co-existwith any other painful condition. Epistemological and semiotic analyses ofFibromyalgia have failed to find any sign,clinical or linguistic, which coulddifferentiate it from other diffusemusculoskeletal pain states. The construct ofFibromyalgia sought to define a discernablereality outside the play of language and topass it off as a natural phenomenon. However,because it has failed both clinically andsemiotically, the construct also fails the testof medical utility for the subject inpersistent pain. (shrink)

Le mouvement général des sciences est de fournir les moyens théoriques d'une reconstruction des phénomènes, en élaborant des lois explicitant leurs régularités sous-jacentes. Aujourd'hui, l'attitude générale en sciences repose sur l'a priori des déterminismes, quelle que soit leur forme. La pensée humaine, dans ses rapports au monde, est une confrontation permanente aux systèmes complexes qui nous habitent et dans lesquels nous habitons. Chacun des systèmes possède une histoire propre qui le rend singulier et source continue de surprises. On se prend (...) à le penser comme système autonome avec ses lois et ses degrés de liberté interne. Quand il s'agit de penser l'être humain, la tentation est encore plus forte de lui prêter un libre arbitre. La question fondamentale est donc celle de la compatibilité entre la pensée scientifique en quête de déterminismes, et la compréhension des complexités, génératrice d'indéterminismes. Comment obtenir une conciliation quand, de la physique à l'éthique, en passant par la cellule biologique, les êtres multicellulaires et les sociétés, on remonte les niveaux d'organisation? Peut-on y parvenir quant à l'être humain et la société sans remettre en question certains aspects cruciaux comme la responsabilité et l'éthique? Ce livre a pour but de revisiter ce débat fondamental, auquel fleuri Atlan a consacré une grande partie de son œuvre, en s'appuyant, d'une part, sur les approches récentes de la modélisation des systèmes complexes et, d'autre part, sur la tradition philosophique multimillénaire. (shrink)

Who blows the whistle — a loner or a well-liked team player? Which of them is more likely to lead a successful opposition to perceived organizational wrongdoing? The potential influence of co-worker pressures to conform on whistle-blowing activity or the likely effects of whistle-blowing on the group have not been addressed. This paper presents a preliminary model of whistle-blowing as an act of nonconformity. One implication is that the success of an opposition will depend on the characteristics of the whistle-blower (...) and how the complaint is pursued. Specific hypotheses and general suggestions for future research and practice are offered. (shrink)

Thucydidean politicians recognize the difficulty posed by the uncertainties of the future in times of war, yet they differ sharply in their conclusions about how best to respond. Thucydides’ analysis of the rhetoric of wartime decision-making focuses upon the deterioration of political culture under a major national crisis, as well as the role of effective leadership in countering this tendency. The dilemma of Thucydidean politics is how to ensure a deliberative process that will not be taken captive by the pressures (...) and emotions of war, and the demagogic leaders who seek to exploit such pressures and emotions for their own ends. By studying the failures and successes of the past (as documented and analyzed in his History), decision-makers in the future can better understand the political dynamics of wartime decision-making and the corrosive forces that crises too often produce. Thucydides’ narrative analyzes the political, social, and moral psychological dynamics that produce aggression, violence, and the desire for domination and revenge. On his view, these are not inevitable products of human nature, merely dispositions that normative institutions are designed to check. Rather he portrays human nature as running amok when such checks are weakened. What can restrain ‘human nature’ are the norms and institutions that promote communal as opposed to factional or individual interests. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a dramatically expanding area of activity for managers and academics. Consumer demand for responsibly produced and fair trade goods is swelling, resulting in increased demands for CSR activity and information. Assets under professional management and invested with a social responsibility focus have also grown dramatically over the last 10 years. Investors choosing social responsibility investment strategies require access to information not provided through traditional financial statements and analyses. At the same time, a group of mainstream (...) institutional investors has encouraged a movement to incorporate environmental, social, and governance information into equity analysis, and multi-stakeholder groups have supported enhanced business reporting on these issues. The majority of research in this area has been performed on European and Australian firms. We expand on this literature by exploring the CSR disclosure practices of a size- and industry-stratified sample of 50 publicly traded U.S. firms, performing a content analysis on the complete identifiable public information portfolio provided by these firms during 2004. CSR activity was disclosed by most firms in the sample, and was included in nearly half of public disclosures made during that year by the sample firms. Areas of particular emphasis are community matters, health and safety, diversity and human resources (HR) matters, and environmental programs. The primary venues of disclosure are mass media releases such as corporate websites and press releases, followed closely by disclosures contained in mandatory filings. Consistent with prior research, we identify industry effects in terms of content, emphasis, and reporting format choices. Unlike prior research, we can offer only mixed evidence on the existence of a size effect. The disclosure frequency and emphasis is significantly different for the largest one-fifth of the firms, but no identifiable trends are present within the rest of the sample. There are, however, identifiable size effects with respect to reporting format choice. Use of websites is positively related to firm size, while the use of mandatory filings is negatively related to firm size. Finally, and also consistent with prior literature, we document a generally self-laudatory tone in the content of CSR disclosures for the sample firms. (shrink)

This study investigates the differences in individuals'' ethical decision making between Canadian university business students and accounting professionals. We examine the differences in three measures known to be important in the ethical decision-making process: ethical awareness, ethical orientation, and intention to perform questionable acts. We tested for differences in these three measures in eight different questionable actions among three groups: students starting business studies, those in their final year of university, and professional accountants.The measures of awareness capture the extent to (...) which respondents felt that a particular action was unethical according to each of several ethical criteria. We found few differences between the two student groups on these measures, suggesting that their education had minimal effect on raising their awareness of the ethical issues in the vignettes. Indeed, overall, the graduating student''s scores were marginally lower than those of the entry-level students. However, the professionals viewed some actions as significantly less ethical than did the graduating students. (shrink)

Reidenbach and Robin (1988, 1990) proposed and refined a multidimensional ethics scale. This study replicates and extends their work by examining the generalizability of the scale beyond marketing to accounting, and to subjects from across the United States and other countries. Results indicate that, in general, the scale holds for this different sample and context. However, an additional utilitarian construct emerged in the current study as important for accounting academics in their ethical decision-making. We also found that when we refined (...) Reidenbach and Robin's measure of intention to make a particular choice, a social desirability bias or halo effect was identified. Methodological implications for business ethics research are also presented. (shrink)

Recent years have featured a spate of regulatory action pertaining to the development and/or disclosure of corporate governance structures in response to financial scandals resulting in part from governance failures. During the same period, corporate governance activists and institutional investors increasingly have called for increased voluntary governance disclosure. Despite this attention, there have been relatively few comprehensive studies of governance disclosure practices and response to the regulation. In this study, we examine a sample of 50 U.S. firms and their public (...) disclosure packages from 2004. We find a high degree of variability in the presentation and reporting format choices for many elements of the governance structure. This variability includes several items for which disclosure is mandated by regulators or legislative action. In particular, smaller firms offer fewer disclosures pertaining to independence, board selection procedures, and oversight of management (including whistleblowing procedures). There are also trends associated with board characteristics: boards that are less independent offer fewer disclosures of independence and management oversight matters. Moreover, large firms provide more disclosures of independence standards, board selection procedures, audit committee matters, management control systems, other committee matters, and whistleblowing procedures but do not appear to have a strictly superior information environment when compared to smaller firms. The findings raise questions about compliance with regulatory requirements and the degree to which conflicts of interest between managers and directors are being controlled. While there have been notable improvements in the information environment of governance disclosures, there remain structural issues that may possess negative ramifications for stakeholders. (shrink)

Most writers now recognize that mental health policy and the mental health system are extremely resistant to real changes that reflect genuine biopsychosocial paradigms of mental disorder. Writers bemoaning the intransigence of the mental health system tend to focus on a small analytical level, only to find themselves mired in the rationalities of the existing system. Problems are acknowledged to be system-wide, yet few writers have used a method of analysis appropriate for systemic problems. Drawing upon the General System Theory (...) (GST) analytical perspective, this article advances a systematic approach to understand the mental health system and to facilitate the development of reform strategies that recognize the system's complexity and changing nature. The article first discusses the failure of major reform efforts in the mental health system and the limitations of mainstream analysis of mental health politics and policies with respect to the objectives of analysis and reform. This article describes how systems thinking has thus far influenced the study of the mental health policy and politics system, and argues that a systemic perspective is profitable for reconceiving the mental health system, enabling a fresh basis for the development of reform strategies. The mental health system should be seen as a social system influenced by larger political and economic dimensions, not just as a 'delivery system' scientifically constructed by neutral experts. Furthermore, the policy planning process should be viewed as part and parcel of a mental health system modeled as complex and dynamic. The systemic perspective outlined here should help both to clarify the value-based objectives that we hold for the system and, consequently, to plan for the strategic reforms that have so far eluded us. (shrink)

The aim of our commentary is to strengthen Cowan's proposal for an inherent capacity limitation in STM by suggesting a neurobiological mechanism based on competitive networks and nonlinear oscillations that avoids some of the shortcomings of the scheme discussed in the target article (Lisman & Idiart 1995).

Historically, nonclassical physics developed in three stages. First came a collection of ad hoc assumptions and then a cookbook of equations known as "quantum mechanics". The equations and their philosophical underpinnings were then collected into a model based on the mathematics of Hilbert space. From the Hilbert space model came the abstaction of "quantum logics". This book explores all three stages, but not in historical order. Instead, in an effort to illustrate how physics and abstract mathematics influence each other we (...) hop back and forth between a purely mathematical development of Hilbert space, and a physically motivated definition of a logic, partially linking the two throughout, and then bringing them together at the deepest level in the last two chapters. This book should be accessible to undergraduate and beginning graduate students in both mathematics and physics. The only strict prerequisites are calculus and linear algebra, but the level of mathematical sophistication assumes at least one or two intermediate courses, for example in mathematical analysis or advanced calculus. No background in physics is assumed. (shrink)

Intervening on causal systems can illuminate their underlying structures. Past work has shown that, relative to adults, young children often make intervention decisions that appear to confirm a single hypothesis rather than those that optimally discriminate alternative hypotheses. Here, we investigated how the ability to make informative causal interventions changes across development. Ninety participants between the ages of 7 and 25 completed 40 different puzzles in which they had to intervene on various causal systems to determine their underlying structures. Each (...) puzzle comprised a three‐ or four‐node computer chip with hidden wires. On each trial, participants viewed two possible arrangements of the chip's hidden wires and had to select a single node to activate. After observing the outcome of their intervention, participants selected a wire configuration and rated their confidence in their selection. We characterized participant choices with a Bayesian measurement model that indexed the extent to which participants selected nodes that would best disambiguate the two possible causal structures versus those that had high causal centrality in one of the two causal hypotheses but did not necessarily discriminate between them. Our model estimates revealed that the use of a discriminatory strategy increased through early adolescence. Further, developmental improvements in intervention strategy were related to changes in the ability to accurately judge the strength of evidence that interventions revealed, as indexed by participants' confidence in their selections. Our results suggest that improvements in causal information‐seeking extend into adolescence and may be driven by metacognitive sensitivity to the efficacy of previous interventions in discriminating competing ideas. (shrink)

This rich collection will introduce students of philosophy and politics to the contemporary critical literature on the classical social contract political thinkers Thomas Hobbes , John Locke , and Jean-Jacques Rousseau . A dozen essays and book excerpts have been selected to guide students through the texts and to introduce them to current scholarly controversies surrounding the contractarian political theories of these three thinkers.

Scientists seeking hard evidence of prayer's curative powers misunderstand the nature of prayer in the Western theistic traditions. Yet theistically consonant ways in which religious belief may influence health do not figure as they should in current professional practice.

The ability to sequence individual genomes is leading to the identification of an increasing number of genetic risk factors for serious diseases. Knowledge of these risk factors can often provide significant medical and psychological benefit, but also raises complex ethical and social issues. This paper focuses on one area of rapid progress: the identification of mutations causing long QT syndrome and other cardiac channel disorders, which can explain some previously unexplained deaths in infants (SIDS) and children and adults (SUDS) and (...) prevent others from occurring. This genetic knowledge, discovered posthumously in many cases, has implications for clinical care for surviving family members who might carry the same mutations. The information obtained from genetic testing, in the context of personal and family history, can guide individually tailored interventions that reduce risk and save lives. At the same time, obtaining and disclosing genetic information raises difficult issues about confidentiality and decision making within families. We draw on the experience of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Cardiogenetics, which has played a leading role in the genetic diagnosis and clinical management of cardiac channel diseases, to explore some of the challenging ethical questions arising in affected families with adolescent children. We focus on the related issues of (1) family confidentiality, privacy and disclosure and (2) adolescent decision making about genetic risk, and argue for the value of interdisciplinary dialogue with affected families in resolving these issues. (shrink)

Modern physicians are taught that they should not involve themselves in their patients’ religious concerns. Many worry that doing so would be intrusive, manipulative, difficult, and embarrassing. Patients, however, often want their physicians to explore questions of religion and faith with them. If these questions are broached in a sensitive and flexible way, they can be a natural and appropriate part of the physician‐patient relationship.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to talk to all those famous names you've read about in psychology? How and why did they get interested in psychology, and what makes them tick? Why was Eysenck so hostile to Freud? What was Skinner's problem with feelings? Psychologists on Psychology presents a fascinating snapshot of psychology's leading protagonists. The last century has seen radical changes in thinking and practice, and the arguments that drive this change are surprisingly deep. These (...) interviews give an insight into the conflicts and controversies at the heart of contemporary psychology, revealing a clash of visions of what human nature is all about. From Skinner to Chomsky, Eysenck to Damasio, Psychologists on Psychology is a unique collection of in-depth conversations with world-famous psychologists. (shrink)