Ethical dilemmas involving tax issues were identified by members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants as posing the most difficult ethical problem for them (Finn et al., Journal of Business Ethics 7(8), pp. 607–609, 1988). The KPMG tax shelter fraud case proves that the tax profession has not gone untainted in the age of numerous accounting and corporate scandals, such as the Enron débâcle (Sikka and Hampton, Accounting Forum 29(3), 325–343, 2005). High-profile scandals serve to highlight the problems (...) caused by differences in ethical judgement among accountants and tax practitioners and the issue of ethics has been brought publicly to the forefront of the profession. Nevertheless, the nature and dimension of ethical issues in tax practice have been largely unexplored (Erard, Journal of Public Economics 52(2), 163–197, 1993; Marshall et al., Journal of Business Ethics 17(12), 1265–1279, 1998; Frecknall Hughes, Unpublished PhD Thesis, The University of Leeds, 2002). This research aims to contribute to the debate on ethics in tax practice by reporting interview data on tax practitioners’ perceptions of ethics in the jurisdictions of Ireland and the United Kingdom and exploring the link or equation of ethics with risk management. (shrink)
Ormerod and Chronicle (1999) reported that optimal solutions to traveling salesperson problems were judged to be aesthetically more pleasing than poorer solutions and that solutions with more convex hull nodes were rated as better figures. To test these conclusions, solution regularity and the number of potential intersections were held constant, whereas solution optimality, the number of internal nodes, and the number of nearest neighbors in each solution were varied factorially. The results did not support the view that the convex hull (...) is an important determinant of figural attractiveness. Also, in contrast to the findings of Ormerod and Chronicle, there were consistent individual differences. Participants appeared to be divided as to whether the most attractive figure enclosed a given area within a perimeter of minimum or maximum length. It is concluded that future research in this area cannot afford to focus exclusively on group performance measures. (shrink)
A recent argument in favor of a free market in human organs claims that such a market enhances personal autonomy. I argue here that such a market would, on the contrary, actually compromise the autonomy of those most likely to sell their organs, namely, the least well off members of society. A Marxian-inspired notion of exploitation is deployed to show how, and in what sense, this is the case.
Contemporary debates on obedience and consent, such as those between Thomas Senor and A. John Simmons, suggest that either political obligation must exist as a concept or there must be natural duty of justice accessible to us through reason. Without one or the other, de facto political institutions would lack the requisite moral framework to engage in legitimate coercion. This essay suggests that both are unnecessary in order to provide a conceptual framework in which obedience to coercive political institutions can (...) be understood. By providing a novel reading of Hobbes’s Leviathan, this article argues that both political obligation and a natural duty to justice are unnecessary to ground the ability of political institutions to engage in legitimate coercion. This essay takes issue with common readings of Hobbes which assume consent is necessary to generate obedience on the part of citizens, and furthermore that political obligation is critical for the success of political institutions. While the failure of the traditional Hobbesian narrative of a consenting individual would seem to suggest the Leviathan is indefensible as a project, this paper argues that the right of war in the state of nature was more central for Hob- bes’s understanding of political institutions than obligation. Furthermore, Hobbes provides an adequate defense of political institutions even if his arguments about consent, obligation and punishment are only rhetorical. In this way Hobbesian law is best understood as a set of practical requirements to avoid war, and not as moral requirements that individuals are bound to comply with. Thus Hobbesian political institutions are not vulnerable to contemporary philosophical anarchist criticisms about political obligation and political institutions as such. To develop this reading, I focus primarily on the Leviathan, including interpretations by Skinner, Kateb, Flathman, and Oakeshott. Ultimately, this argument provides insight into contem- porary political institutions of the state, citizenship, criminality, and the law in a world where political obligation has not been adequately justified. (shrink)
Recent philosophical arguments in favor of legal markets in human organs such as kidneys claim that respect for autonomy justifies such markets. I argue that these arguments fail to establish the moral permissibility of commercialized organ sales because they do not show that those most likely to serve as vendors would choose to sell autonomously. Pro-market views utilize hierarchical theories of autonomy to demonstrate that potential organ vendors may autonomously consent to selling their organs even in the absence of any (...) practical alternative to doing so. But central to hierarchical accounts of autonomy is the idea that persons my experience volitional ambivalence, a condition in which the will is irreconcilably conflicted. Because commercialized organ sales would create volitional ambivalence in many of those who opt to sell an organ, the choice to sell an organ would not be an autonomous one. (shrink)
Bering's target article proposes that the tendency to believe in an afterlife emerged (in evolutionary history) in response to selective pressures unique to human societies. However, the empirical evidence presented fails to account for the broader social context that impinges upon researcher–participant interactions, and so fails to displace the more parsimonious explanation that it is childhood credulity that underlies the acquisition of afterlife beliefs through cultural exposure.
From Freud's Consulting Room charts the development of his ideas through his clinical work, the successes and failures of his most dramatic and significant case ...
This paper studies long-term norms concerning actions. In Meyer's Propositional Deontic Logic (PDₑL), only immediate duties can be expressed, however, often one has duties of longer durations such as: "Never do that", or "Do this someday". In this paper, we will investigate how to amend (PDₑL) so that such long-term duties can be expressed. This leads to the interesting and suprising consequence that the long-term prohibition and obligation are not interdefinable in our semantics, while there is a duality between these (...) two notions. As a consequence, we have provided a new analysis of the long-term obligation by introducing a new atomic proposition I (indebtedness) to represent the condition that an agent has some unfulfilled obligation. (shrink)
The political thought of Mohandas K. Gandhi has been increasingly used as a paradigmatic example of hybrid political thought that developed out of a cross-cultural dialogue of eastern and western influences. With a novel unpacking of this hybridity, this article focuses on the conceptual influences that Gandhi explicitly stressed in his autobiography and other writings, particularly the works of Leo Tolstoy and the Bhagavad Gītā. This new tracing of influence in the development of Gandhi’s thought alters the substantive thrust of (...) Gandhi’s thought away from more familiar quasi-liberal interpretations and towards a far more substantive bhakti or devotional understanding of politics. The analysis reveals a conception of politics that is not pragmatic in its use of non-violence, but instead points to a devotional focus on cultivating the self (ātman), ultimately dissolving the public/private distinction that many readings of Gandhi’s thought depend upon. (shrink)
Over the past decade or so political leaders around the world have begun to apologize for, and even seek reconciliation between perpetrators and victims of large-scale moral wrongs such as slavery, campaigns of ethnic cleansing, and official regimes of racial segregation. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is probably the most well-known example of such political efforts to effect what might be called moral healing within and between nations. In this essay, I canvass various senses of reconciliation, clarifying (...) which are appropriate for understanding these recent political efforts to heal the wounds caused by state-sanctioned moral atrocities. I argue that interpersonal reconciliation is not likely to be a promising model for understanding political efforts to achieve moral closure for large-scale wrongs, and I close with some worries about the efficacy of state-sponsored attempts to reconcile victims to their wrongdoers. (shrink)
Explaining people : theoretical psychology throughout the ages -- Ways of knowing : the scientific method and its alternatives -- From philosophy to laboratory : the arrival of empirical psychology -- The evolution of measurement : from physiognomy to psychometrics -- The behaviourist revolution : actions as data -- The cognitive revolution : the metaphor of computation -- Neuroscience and genetics : 21st century reductionism? -- Can psychology be scientific? -- Subjectivist approaches to psychology -- The problem of consciousness -- (...) Science since the 20th century : postpositivism and postmodernism -- Relativism, constructivism and their implications for psychology -- The future of psychology -- And finally, before the exam--. (shrink)
Explaining people : theoretical psychology throughout the ages -- Ways of knowing : the scientific method and its alternatives -- From philosophy to laboratory : the arrival of empirical psychology -- The evolution of measurement : from physiognomy to psychometrics -- The behaviourist revolution : actions as data -- The cognitive revolution : the metaphor of computation -- Neuroscience and genetics : 21st century reductionism? -- Can psychology be scientific? -- Subjectivist approaches to psychology -- The problem of consciousness -- (...) Science since the 20th century : postpositivism and postmodernism -- Relativism, constructivism and their implications for psychology -- The future of psychology -- And finally, before the exam--. (shrink)
The perception of behavior as a moral or conventional concern can be influenced by contextual variables, including status and power differences. We propose that social processes and in particular social role enactment through the exercise of power will psychologically motivate moralization. Punishing or rewarding others creates a moral dilemma that can be resolved by externalizing causation to incontrovertible moral rules. Legitimate power related to structure and position can carry moral weight but may not influence the power holder’s perceptions of rules (...) and general norms of behavior. Social identity theory suggests moralization could be promoted by a concern for shared, defining values. However, the tendency to moralize another’s behavior can be injurious to shared identity. We explored white-collar employees’ perceptions of several categories of noxious or deviant workplace behaviors and regressed these perceptions on the tendency to use legitimate, referent, or reward and punish power; social identity; and the interaction of social identity and power, in particular legitimate power. Only the tendency to influence others through punishment or reward predicted moralization. Alternative causal explanations for the findings were addressed through the absence of any relationships between punishment and reward power and perceptions of deviant behaviors as wrong, upsetting, or requiring punishment. We discuss these results in the context of self and social processes, the social construction of morals and power, and the impact of managers’ behavior on group or organizational ethics. (shrink)
"The terrain of the self is vast," notes renowned psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig, "parts known, parts impenetrable, and parts unexplored." How do we construct a sense of ourselves? How can a self reflect upon itself or deceive itself? Is all personal identity plagiarized? Is a "true" or "authentic" self even possible? Is it possible to really "know" someone else or ourselves for that matter? To answer these and many other intriguing questions, Ludwig takes a unique approach, examining the art of biography (...) for the insights it can give us into the construction of the self. In The Biography of the Self, he takes readers on an intriguing tour of the biographer's art, revealing how much this can tell us about ourselves. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty-one of our most esteemed biographers--writers such as David McCullough (the biographer of Truman and Theodore Roosevelt), Wallace Stegner (John Wesley Powell), Gloria Steinem (Marilyn Monroe), Leon Edel (Henry James), Peter Gay (Freud), Diane Middlebrook (Anne Sexton), and many others--and interweaving fascinating observations of his own practice, Ludwig takes us through the labyrinthine hall of mirrors we term the self and shows us how malleable, elusive, and paradoxical it can be. In chapters such as "The 'Real' Marilyn," "Psychoanalyzing Freud," "How Did Hitler Live With Himself?" and "What Madness Reveals," we sit in as biographers talk not only about their work, but about their subjects (Allan Bullock on Hitler and Stalin, for instance, or Arnold Rampersad on Langston Hughes) and how their subjects saw themselves. Ludwig describes how biographers must impose a narrative structure on their subjects' lives to create order out of a mass of often contradictory views, baffling behavior, and inconsistent self-representations, much in the same way that psychotherapists try to foster self-awareness and understanding in their patients. In his concluding chapter, Ludwig introduces a new concept--biographical freedom--which brilliantly reconciles free will and determinism. We can, he asserts, become biographers of ourselves. Like the biographer, we are constrained to consider all the available facts of our lives--the personal experiences, cultural forces, and predetermined scripts that shape us--but we remain free to interpret, emphasize, and fashion these givens into a cohesive and meaningful narrative of our own choosing. This thought-provoking volume offers not only a wide-ranging and informative commentary on the biographer's art, but also a highly original theory of the self. Readers interested in biography and in the lives of others will come away with a new sense of what it means to be a "person" and, in particular, who they are. (shrink)
Cultural Semiosis traces the theoretical itinerary of the signifier in the continental tradition. Cultural semiosis provides links for cultural studies to the philosophical, the literary, the historical and the social. Understood semiotically, cultural signs and signifiers are inscribed in the fabric of cultural practices. Cultural semiosis enters the spaces of everyday language, visuality, sexuality and symbolization. These original essays interpret and provide tools for the understanding of cultural studies within a philosophical framework. Contributors: M. Alison Arnett, Debra Bergoffen, Peter Carravetta, (...) Alessandro Carrera, Julia Kristeva, John Llewelyn, Michael Naas, Kelly Oliver, Adi Ophir, Francois Raffoul, Mark Roberts, Stephanie Sage, Hugh J. Silverman. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: -- Reid and Hume on the Possibility of Character--James A. Harris * Adam Smith's Rhetorical Art of Character--Stephen McKenna * The Moral Education of Mankind: Character and Religious Moderatism in the Sermons of Hugh Blair--Thomas Ahnert * The Not-So-Prodigal Son: James Boswell and the Scottish Enlightenment--Anthony La Vopa * Character, Sociability and Correspondence: Elizabeth Griffith and The Letters between Henry and Frances--Eve Tavor Bannet * Smellie's Dreams: Character and Consciousness in the Scottish Enlightenment--Phyllis Mack William * (...) Aspects of Character and Sociability in Scottish Enlightenment Medicine--Neil Vickers * The 'Peculiar Colouring of the Mind': Character and Painted Portraiture in the Scottish Enlightenment--Viccy Coltman * National Characters and Race: A Scottish Enlightenment Debate--Silvia Sebastiani * Character and Cosmopolitanism in the Scottish-American Enlightenment--Hannah Spahn * Historical Characters: Biography, the Science of Man, and Romantic Fiction--Susan Manning * Necessity, Freedom, and Character Formation from the Eighteenth Century to the Nineteenth--Jerrold Seigel. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: Introduction Rudy Rucker; Part I. Perspectives on Infinity from History: 1. Infinity as a transformative concept in science and theology Wolfgang Achtner; Part II. Perspectives on Infinity from Mathematics: 2. The mathematical infinity Enrico Bombieri; 3. Warning signs of a possible collapse of contemporary mathematics Edward Nelson; Part III. Technical Perspectives on Infinity from Advanced Mathematics: 4. The realm of the infinite W. Hugh Woodin; 5. A potential subtlety concerning the distinction between determinism and nondeterminism W. (...) Hugh Woodin; 6. Concept calculus: much better than Harvey M. Friedman; Part IV. Perspectives on Infinity from Physics and Cosmology: 7. Some considerations on infinity in physics Carlo Rovelli; 8. Cosmological intimations of infinity Anthony Aguirre; 9. Infinity and the nostalgia of the stars Marco Bersanelli; 10. Infinities in cosmology Michael Heller; Part V. Perspectives on Infinity from Philosophy and Theology: 11. God and infinity: directions for future research Graham Oppy; 12. Notes on the concept of the infinite in the history of Western metaphysics David Bentley Hart; 13. God and infinity: theological insights from Cantor's mathematics Robert J. Russell; 14. A partially skeptical response to Hart and Russell Denys A. Turner. (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: Part I. Historical Context - Gödel's Contributions and Accomplishments: 1. The impact of Gödel's incompleteness theorems on mathematics Angus Macintyre; 2. Logical hygiene, foundations, and abstractions: diversity among aspects and options Georg Kreisel; 3. The reception of Gödel's 1931 incompletabilty theorems by mathematicians, and some logicians, to the early 1960s Ivor Grattan-Guinness; 4. 'Dozent Gödel will not lecture' Karl Sigmund; 5. Gödel's thesis: an appreciation Juliette C. Kennedy; 6. Lieber Herr Bernays!, Lieber Herr Gödel! Gödel on (...) finitism, constructivity, and Hilbert's program Solomon Feferman; 7. Computation and intractability: echoes of Kurt Gödel Christos H. Papadimitriou; 8. From the entscheidungsproblem to the personal computer - and beyond B. Jack Copeland; 9. Gödel, Einstein, Mach, Gamow, and Lanczos: Gödel's remarkable excursion into cosmology Wolfgang Rindler; 10. Physical unknowables Karl Svozil; Part II. A Wider Vision - The Interdisciplinary, Philosophical, And Theological Implications of Gödel's Work: 11. Gödel and physics John D. Barrow; 12. Gödel, Thomas Aquinas, and the unknowability of God Denys A. Turner; 13. Gödel's mathematics of philosophy Piergiorgio Odifreddi; 14. Gödel's ontological proof and its variants Petr Hájek; 15. The Gödel theorem and human nature Hilary Putnam; 16. Gödel, the mind, and the laws of physics Roger Penrose; Part III. New Frontiers - Beyond Gödel's Work in Mathematics and Symbolic Logic: 17. Gödel's functional interpretation and its use in current mathematics Ulrich Kohlenbach; 18. My forty years on his shoulders Harvey M. Friedman; 19. My interaction with Kurt Gödel: the man and his work Paul J. Cohen; 20. The transfinite universe W. Hugh Woodin; 21. The Gödel phenomena in mathematics: a modern view Avi Wigderson. (shrink)
After precisely specifying the thesis of the causal theory of time, Grünbaum's program developed to support this thesis is examined. Four objections to his definition of temporal order in terms of a more primitive causal relation are put and held to be conclusive. Finally, the philosophical arguments that Grünbaum has proposed supporting the desirability of establishing a causal theory of time are shown to be either invalid or inconclusive.
Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction Juliette Kennedy and Roman Kossak; 2. Historical remarks on Suslin's problem Akihiro Kanamori; 3. The continuum hypothesis, the generic-multiverse of sets, and the [OMEGA] conjecture W. Hugh Woodin; 4. [omega]-Models of finite set theory Ali Enayat, James H. Schmerl and Albert Visser; 5. Tennenbaum's theorem for models of arithmetic Richard Kaye; 6. Hierarchies of subsystems of weak arithmetic Shahram Mohsenipour; 7. Diophantine correct open induction Sidney Raffer; 8. Tennenbaum's theorem and recursive reducts James H. (...) Schmerl; 9. History of constructivism in the 20th century A. S. Troelstra; 10. A very short history of ultrafinitism Rose M. Cherubin and Mirco A. Mannucci; 11. Sue Toledo's notes of her conversations with Gödel in 1972-1975 Sue Toledo; 12. Stanley Tennenbaum's Socrates Curtis Franks; 13. Tennenbaum's proof of the irrationality of [the square root of] 2́. (shrink)
Most studies of corporate social responsiveness (CSR) focus on the relationship between CSR and profit. Here, we use three perspectives (institutional theory, economic theory and agency theory) to explain CSR. Industry norms, market share and indicators of management reputation predict variance in CSR. The combined perspectives improve understanding of both CSR and the CSR-profit relationship in two ways. First, they suggest that CSR levels and their relationship with profit will vary by industry. Second, they suggest that stock market measures and (...) accounting measures will respond differently to CSR measures. Stock market measures lead, while accounting measures lag, CSR. (shrink)
The relationship between corporate social responsiveness and profitability is investigated in a sample of corporate directors. The findings show there is no relationship between the level of director social responsiveness and corporate profitability. The implications of these results are discussed, especially as they relate to concerns about corporate governance.
William Hirstein, Brain Fiction -- John Bickle; Susan Blackmore, Consciousness: An Introduction -- Tim Calton; Eric Dietrich and Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Sisyphus's Boulder -- Hugh Noble; Ted Honderich, On Consciousness -- Paavo Pylkkanen.
William Hirstein, Brain Fiction -- John Bickle; Susan Blackmore, Consciousness: An Introduction -- Tim Calton; Eric Dietrich and Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Sisyphus's Boulder -- Hugh Noble; Ted Honderich, On Consciousness -- Paavo Pylkkanen.
As a result of recent legislative developments and greater ease of accessibility, the Human Resources Manager (HRM) faces the challenge of not only maintaining records but also that of protecting employees from misuse of personal information contained in their individual personnel files. The widespread use of computers for maintaining employee records has resulted in new ethical dimensions and/or challenges for the HRM. Serious questions regarding accessibility to and dissemination of such personal information now confront the HRM. Unless policies are developed (...) by organizations for dealing with such questions, eventually government will mandate such policies in order to protect employee rights. (shrink)
