Recent financial fraud legislation such as the Dodd–Frank Act and the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (U.S. House of Representatives, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, [H.R. 4173], 2010 ; U.S. House of Representatives, The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, Public Law 107-204 [H.R. 3763], 2002 ) relies heavily on whistleblowers for enforcement, and offers protection and incentives for whistleblowers. However, little is known about many aspects of the whistleblowing decision, especially the effects of contextual and wrongdoing attributes on organizational (...) members’ willingness to report fraud. We extend the ethics literature by experimentally investigating how the nature of the wrongdoing and the awareness of those surrounding the whistleblower can influence whistleblowing. As predicted, we find that employees are less likely to report: (1) financial statement fraud than theft; (2) immaterial than material financial statement fraud; (3) when the wrongdoer is aware that the potential whistleblower has knowledge of the fraud; and (4) when others in addition to the wrongdoer are not aware of the fraud. Our findings extend whistleblowing research in several ways. For instance, prior research provides little evidence concerning the effects of fraud type, wrongdoer awareness, and others’ awareness on whistleblowing intentions. We also provide evidence that whistleblowing settings represent an exception to the well-accepted theory of diffusion of responsibility. Our participants are professionals who represent the likely pool of potential whistleblowers in organizations. (shrink)
Reviewed in: The Journal of the History of the Neural Sciences, 2011 (vol. 20, no. 2) Consciousness and Mental Life by Daniel N. Robinson This book is a refreshingly philosophical treatise on a topic that frequently falls victim to the predatory nature of the scientist's red herring. Not to detract from the merit of this pervasive red herring, but many volumes ostensibly about consciousness end up being little more than books on “mental life.” Expounding on the anatomical and cognitive (...) fascinations that lure so many into the various fields of the neurosciences, the discourses neglect to directly address “consciousness” itself in the process. By sticking to the realm of philosophy, Robinson successfully avoids this misrepresentation of the titular topic “consciousness.”...The author sets out to defend an elite selection of classical philosophers — including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Dewey, Russell, Wittgenstein — while also introducing more contemporary theories and examples. Robinson is honorably unbiased through most of this pursuit. He defends ideas that have earned their place in history while accomplishing exactly what he sets out to accomplish...When he does build an argument on questionable basic tenets, he is unequivocal: Whether one agrees with Robinson or not, readers at the very least will know whether they agree or disagree. Robinson is quite clear about where he stands, and his arguments allow the reader to further develop their own stance, regardless of whether the reader and Robinson are standing on separate planes. One of the attractive features of this book, and perhaps the strongest bolster to Robinson's defense lies in his provision of background and zeitgeist information in the early chapters. For example, in a chapter devoted to Descartes and his influence, the reader is briefly presented with Descartes’ education and the intellectual culture surrounding his work. Because the absence of such information has often been the cause of misunderstanding and neglect, this remembrance is a good scaffold for Robinson's points that follow. As to the style of the writing itself, it is nonpedantic and includes passages of great prose...I would frequently read a couple paragraphs, already have a question forming in my mind, and then be delighted, even awed, that the next few paragraphs addressed the question I was evolving...The book is not meant to be a comprehensive evaluation of all the philosophical viewpoints or musings on consciousness. It is a refreshing look at ideas that are no longer fresh for most readers...For the expert or well-versed person in theories of consciousness, Robinson's book is an asset...It requires concentration. But the effort will be duly rewarded... Christy M. Kelley Department of Neurological Sciences Rush University Medical Center, Chicago . (shrink)
"An American psychologist, Daniel N. Robinson, traces the development of the insanity plea...[He offers] an assured historical survey." Roy Porter, The Times [UK] "Wild Beasts and Idle Humours is truly unique. It synthesizes material that I do not believe has ever been considered in this context, and links up the historical past with contemporaneous values and politics. Robinson effortlessly weaves religious history, literary history, medical history, and political history, and demonstrates how the insanity defense cannot be fully understood (...) without consideration of all these sources." Michael L. Perlin, New York Law School "Daniel N. Robinson has written a graceful history of insanity and the law stretching from Homer to Hinckley. He attempts no final theory as to how the law should cope with the insane; he seeks, rather, to use the shifting notions of when madness exculpates criminal activity to illuminate the core self-perceptions of the cultures developing ever-evolving resolutions of the problem...[T]he grandeur of the theme...commands attention and respect." --Neal Johnston, The Nation . (shrink)
Benjamin Libet's influential publications have raised important questions about voluntarist accounts of action. His findings are taken as evidence that the processes in the central nervous system associated with the initiation of an action occur earlier than the decision to act. However, in light of the methods employed and of relevant findings drawn from research addressed to the timing of neurobehavioural processes, Libet's conclusions are untenable.
"This book is a significant contribution to the analytic study of ethics, to the history of ethics, and to the growing field of philosophical psychology.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it might seem that questions about the nature of the mind are best left to scientists rather than philosophers. How could the views of Aristotle or Descartes or Kant possibly contribute anything to debates about these issues, when the relevant neurophysiological facts and principles were completely unknown to them? This Oxford Reader shows that the arguments of philosophers throughout history still provide essential insights into contemporary questions about the mind and help to clarify (...) the underlying scientific assumptions. Contributions from thinkers ranging from Plato and Locke to Roger Penrose and Oliver Sacks show that appreciating the full complexity of debates about consciousness, intelligence, and perception demands attention to fundamental questions that have occupied philosophers for over two thousand years. (shrink)
From the Upanishads to Homer -- Philosophy, did the Greeks invent it -- Pythagoras and the divinity of number -- What is there? -- The Greek tragedians on man's fate -- Herodotus and the lamp of history -- Socrates on the examined life -- Plato's search for truth -- Can virtue be taught? -- Plato's Republic, man writ large -- Hippocrates and the science of life -- Aristotle on the knowable -- Aristotle on friendship -- Aristotle on the perfect life (...) -- Rome, the Stoics, and the rule of law -- The Stoic bridge to Christianity -- Roman law, making a city of the once-wide world -- The light within, Augustine on human nature -- Islam -- Secular knowledge, the idea of university -- The reappearance of experimental science -- Scholasticism and the theory of natural law -- The Renaissance, was there one? -- Let us burn the witches to save them -- Francis Bacon and the authority of experience -- Descartes and the authority of reason -- Newton, the saint of science -- Hobbes and the social machine -- Locke's Newtonian science of the mind -- No matter? The challenge of materialism -- Hume and the pursuit of happiness -- Thomas Reid and the Scottish school -- France and the philosophes -- The federalist papers and the great experiment -- What is enlightenment? Kant on freedom -- Moral science and the natural world -- Phrenology, a science of the mind -- The idea of freedom -- The Hegelians and history -- The aesthetic movement, genius -- Nietzsche at the twilight -- The liberal tradition, J.S. Mill -- Darwin and nature's "purposes" -- Marxism, dead but not forgotten -- The Freudian world -- The radical William James -- William James' pragmatism -- Wittgenstein and the discursive turn -- Alan Turing in the forest of wisdom -- Four theories of the good life -- Ontology, what there "really" is -- Philosophy of science, the last word? -- Philosophy of psychology and related confusions -- Philosophy of mind, if there is one -- What makes a problem "moral" -- Medicine and the value of life -- On the nature of law -- Justice and just wars -- Aesthetics, beauty without observers -- God, really? (shrink)
Guardian of Dialogue. Max Scheler's Phenomenology, Sociology of Knowledge and Philosophy of Love By Michael D. Barber, Bucknell University Press 1993. Pp. 205. ISBN 0?8387?5228. n.p. The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Difference By Rosalyn Diprose, Routledge, 1994. Pp. xi + 148. ISBN 0?415?09783?5. £35.00. Gottlob Freges Politisches Tagebuch Edited by Gottfried Gabriel and Wolfgang Kienzler, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Vol. 42, No. 6 (1994), pp. 1057?98. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding By Raymond W. (...) Gibbs, Jr., Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. x + 527. ISBN 0?521?41965?4. £59.95. Woman of Reason: Feminism, Humanism and Political Thought By Karen Green, Polity Press, 1995. Pp. 220. ISBN 0?7456?1448?5. £39.50. The Nature of True Minds By John Heil, Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 248. ISBN 0?521?41337?0. £35. Gilles Deleuze ou le système du multiple By Philippe Mengue, Editions Kimé, Collection ?Philosophie?épistémologie?, 1995. Pp. 311. ISBN 2?841740?00?5. 180FF. Science as Salvation By Mary Midgley, Routledge, 1992. Pp. 239. ISBN 0?415?06271?3. £30.00. Hegel's Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason By Terry Pinkard, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. vii + 451. ISBN 0?521?45300?3. £40.00. (shrink)
Max Bennett is a distinguished Australian neuroscientist, Peter Hacker an Oxford philosopher and a leading authority on Wittgenstein. A book resulting from their collaboration (M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) has received high praise. According to the Blackwell website, G. H. von Wright asserts that it ‘will certainly, for a long time to come, be the most important contribution to the mind-body problem that there is’; and Sir Anthony Kenny says it (...) ‘shows that the claims made on behalf of cognitive science are ill-founded.’          The book builds on Wittgenstein’s remark that ‘Only of a human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees, is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious’ (quoted at p. 71). The authors identify what they call the mereological fallacy, the fallacy of attributing to a part of something properties that are correctly attributed only to the whole. Much of the book is a development of the claim that most neuroscientists commit this fallacy by attributing to brains properties and activities that can properly be attributed only to persons.          I won’t give a general review of the book, which does make valuable points concerning the importance of using language accurately in discussing mental concepts: helpful and laudatory reviews can be found on the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews website (by Dennis Patterson) and in Philosophy 79, No. 307 (January 2004) 141-46 (by Daniel N. Robinson). However, I believe that some of its basic propositions are themselves fundamentally mistaken, and suggest that this is a consequence of disregard of opposing considerations, and insufficient recognition of the flexibility of language. I will discuss three basic propositions from the book, which are particularly relevant from the ‘consciousness studies’ point of view.. (shrink)
Turning Images in Philosophy, Science, and Religion: A New Book of Nature brings together new essays addressing the role of images and imagination recruited in the perennial debates surrounding nature, mind, and God. -/- The debate between "new atheists" and religious apologists today is often hostile. This book sets a new tone by locating the debate between theism and naturalism (most "new atheists" are self-described "naturalists") in the broader context of reflection on imagination and aesthetics. The eleven essays will be (...) of interest to anyone who is fascinated by the power of imagination and the role of aesthetics in deciding between worldviews or philosophies of nature. Representing a variety of points of view, authors include outstanding philosophers of religion and of science, a distinguished art historian, and a visual artist. -/- The book begins with Martin Kemp's essay on the work of the biologist, mathematician and classical scholar D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson in which Kemp develops the idea of "structural intuitions and a critique of reductive thinking about the natural world. This is followed by Geoffrey Gorham's overview and analysis of images of nature and God found in early modern science and philosophy. Anthony O'Hear questions a reductive, naturalist account of the origin of mind and values. Dale Jacquette offers a thoroughgoing naturalistic philosophy of the emergence of intentionality and a unique argument about the emergence of art and the aesthetic appreciation of nature. E.J. Lowe brings to light some challenges facing naturalistic approaches to human imaginative sensibility. Douglas Hedley articulates and defends a cognitive account of imagination, highlighting some of the difficulties confronting naturalism. Daniel N. Robinson offers a sweeping treatment of nature and naturalism, historically engaging Aristotle, Kant, Hegel and others. Conor Cunningham provides an aggressive critique of contemporary naturalism. Gordon Graham investigates the resources of naturalism in accounting for our sense of the sacred. Mark Wynn provides a subtle understanding of imagination and perception, suggesting how these may play into the theism - naturalism debate. The book concludes with Jil Evans' reflections on how images of the Galapagos Islands have been employed philosophically to picture either a naturalist or theistic image of nature. (shrink)
The Gödelian symphony -- Foundations and paradoxes -- This sentence is false -- The liar and Gödel -- Language and metalanguage -- The axiomatic method or how to get the non-obvious out of the obvious -- Peano's axioms -- And the unsatisfied logicists, Frege and Russell -- Bits of set theory -- The abstraction principle -- Bytes of set theory -- Properties, relations, functions, that is, sets again -- Calculating, computing, enumerating, that is, the notion of algorithm -- Taking numbers (...) as sets of sets -- It's raining paradoxes -- Cantor's diagonal argument -- Self-reference and paradoxes -- Hilbert -- Strings of symbols -- In mathematics there is no ignorabimus -- Gödel on stage -- Our first encounter with the incompleteness theorem -- And some provisos -- Gödelization, or say it with numbers! -- TNT -- The arithmetical axioms of tnt and the standard model N -- The fundamental property of formal systems -- The Gödel numbering -- And the arithmetization of syntax -- Bits of recursive arithmetic -- Making algorithms precise -- Bits of recursion theory -- Church's thesis -- The recursiveness of predicates, sets, properties, and relations -- And how it is represented in typographical number theory -- Introspection and representation -- The representability of properties, relations, and functions -- And the Gödelian loop -- I am not provable -- Proof pairs -- The property of being a theorem of TNI (is not recursive!) -- Arithmetizing substitution -- How can a TNT sentence refer to itself? -- Fixed point -- Consistency and omega-consistency -- Proving G1 -- Rosser's proof -- The unprovability of consistency and the immediate consequences of G1 and -- G2 -- Technical interlude -- Immediate consequences of G1 and G2 -- Undecidable1 and undecidable 2 -- Essential incompleteness, or the syndicate of mathematicians -- Robinson arithmetic -- How general are Gödel's results? -- Bits of turing machine -- G1 and G2 in general -- Unexpected fish in the formal net -- Supernatural numbers -- The culpability of the induction scheme -- Bits of truth (not too much of it, though) -- The world after Gödel -- Bourgeois mathematicians! : the postmodern interpretations -- What is postmodernism? -- From Gödel to Lenin -- Is biblical proof decidable? -- Speaking of the totality -- Bourgeois teachers! -- (un)interesting bifurcations -- A footnote to Plato -- Explorers in the realm of numbers -- The essence of a life -- The philosophical prejudices of our times -- From Gödel to Tarski -- Human, too human -- Mathematical faith -- I'm not crazy! -- Qualified doubts -- From gentzen to the dialectica interpretation -- Mathematicians are people of faith -- Mind versus computer : Gödel and artificial intelligence -- Is mind (just) a program? -- Seeing the truth and going outside the system -- The basic mistake -- In the haze of the transfinite -- Know thyself : Socrates and the inexhaustibility of mathematics -- Gödel versus wittgenstein and the paraconsistent interpretation -- When geniuses meet -- The implausible Wittgenstein -- There is no metamathematics -- Proof and prose -- The single argument -- But how can arithmetic be inconsistent? -- The costs and benefits of making Wittgenstein plausible. (shrink)
Although in modern times and clinical settings, we rarely see the old characteristics of tribal shamanism such as deep trances, out-of-body experiences, and soul retrieval, the archetypal dreams, waking visions and active imagination of modern depth psychology represents a liminal zone where ancient and modern shamanism overlaps with analytical psychology. These essays explore the contributors' excursions as healers and therapists into this zone. The contributors describe the many facets shamanism and depth psychology have in common: animal symbolism; recognition of the (...) reality of the collective unconscious; and healing rituals that put therapist and patient in touch with transpersonal powers. By reintroducing the core of shamanism in contemporary form, these essays shape a powerful means of healing that combines the direct contact with the inner psyche one finds in shamanism with the self-reflection and critical awareness of modern consciousness. The essays draw from the contributors' experiences both inside and outside the consulting room, and with cultures that include the Lakota Sioux, and those of the Peruvian Andes and the Hawaiian Islands. The focus is on those aspects of shamanism most useful and relevant to the modern practice of depth psychology. As a result, these explorations bring the young practice of analytical psychology into perspective as part of a much more ancient heritage of shamanistic healing. Contributors: Margaret Laurel Allen, Norma Churchill, Arthur Colman, Lori Cromer, Patricia Damery, C. Jess Groesbeck, Pansy Hawk Wing, June Kounin, Carol McRae, Pilar Montero, Jeffrey A. Raff, Janet S. Robinson, Meredith Sabini, Dyane N. Sherwood, Sara Spaulding-Phillips, Bradley A. Te Paske and Louis M. Vuksinick. (shrink)
We give necessary conditions for a set to be definable by a formula with a universal quantifier and an existential quantifier over algebraic integer rings or algebraic number fields. From these necessary conditions we obtain some undefinability results. For example, N is not definable by such a formula over Z. This extends a previous result of R. M. Robinson.
Essays: The language of values, by W. Moore. The languages of sign theory and value theory, by E. S. Robinson. Significance, signification, and painting, by C. Morris. Evaluation and discourse, by S. C. Pepper. Empirical verifiability theory of factual meaning and axiological truth, by E. M. Adams. The third man, by I. McGreal. A non-normative definition of "good," by A. C. Garnett. The judgmental functions of moral language, by H. Fingarette. Some puzzles for attitude theories of value, by R. (...) B. Brandt. The meaning of "intrinsic value," by H. N. Lee. Value propositions, by R. S. Hartman. A second sequel on value, by R. Lepley.--Comments and responses. (shrink)
The people and the value of their experience, by N. T. Pratt.--From kingship to democracy, by J. P. Harland.--Democracy at Athens, by G. M. Harper.--Athens and the Delian League, by B. D. Meritt.--Socialism at Sparta, by P. R. Coleman-Norton.--Tyranny, by M. Mac Laren.--Federal unions, by C. A. Robinson.--Alexander and the world state, by O. W. Reinmuth.--The Antigonids, by J. V. A. Fine.--Ptolemaic Egypt: a planned economy, by S. L. Wallace.--The Seleucids: the theory of monarchy, by G. Downey.--The political status (...) of the independent cities of Asia Minor in the Hellenistic period, by D. Magie.--The ideal states of Plato and Aristotle, by W. J. Oates.--Epilogue, by A. C. Johnson.--Bibliography (p. 225-233).--Index, by H. V. M. Dennis, III. (shrink)
