This article examines the concurrent validity of the Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini Research & Analytics corporate social performance measures. Because KLD changed its evaluation methods to richer approaches, a new look at the concurrent validity of the indicators is necessary. To do this new look, the authors examine the new “Binary” and “Continuous” versions of the KLD and compare them with previous versions of KLD. The results suggest that the continuous scores provide better measurement characteristics than do the binary version. Overall, (...) the new versions of the KLD data demonstrate concurrent validity with the original version. (shrink)

:Academic Medical Centers offer patient care and perform research. Increasingly, AMCs advertise to the public in order to garner income that can support these dual missions. In what follows, we raise concerns about the ways that advertising blurs important distinctions between them. Such blurring is detrimental to AMC efforts to fulfill critically important ethical responsibilities pertaining both to science communication and clinical research, because marketing campaigns can employ hype that weakens research integrity and contributes to therapeutic misconception and misestimation, undermining (...) the informed consent process that is essential to the ethical conduct of research. We offer ethical analysis of common advertising practices that justify these concerns. We also suggest the need for a deliberative body convened by the Association of American Medical Colleges and others to develop a set of voluntary guidelines that AMCs can use to avoid in the future, the problems found in many current AMC advertising practices. (shrink)

Many philosophical doctrines have been suggested as the target Eubulides intended his Heap and Bald Man to destroy: the coherence of empirical concepts, the law of noncontradiction, the Law of Excluded Middle, pluralism, Aristotle's theory of infinity or of the mean. Aristotle betrays no clear awareness of sorites reasoning in any of his extant works. Sorites puzzles became a standard weapon of Skeptics in their attacks on Stoic philosophy. The Stoics distinguished between sentences and the propositions they are used to (...) assert. The Stoics were prepared to apply bivalence to sorites reasoning and swallow the consequences: any difficulty in answering the sorites questions must come from our ignorance of the right answers, not their non‐existence. More recently, sorites puzzles have been discussed in the form of apparently sound arguments with apparently false conclusions, and philosophers such as Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright have advanced grounds for the premises. (shrink)

We distinguish between literal and metaphorical applications of Bayesian models. When intended literally, an isomorphism exists between the elements of representation assumed by the rational analysis and the mechanism that implements the computation. Thus, observation of the implementation can externally validate assumptions underlying the rational analysis. In other applications, no such isomorphism exists, so it is not clear how the assumptions that allow a Bayesian model to fit data can be independently validated.

In this paper we present the standard Thomistic view concerning substances and their parts. We then note some objections to that view. Afterwards, we present Aquinas’s Christology, then draw an analogy between the relation that holds between the Second Person and the assumed human nature, on the one hand, and the relation that holds between a substance whole and its substance parts, on the other. We then show how the analogy, which St. Thomas himself drew at points, is useful for (...) providing a theory that answers the objections that the standard Thomistic view faces. Finally we answer objections to our approach. We conclude that there is a hylomorphic theory, founded on an analogy from Aquinas’s Christology, that fits well with the empirical data concerning substance parts, on which some complete created material substances have other complete created material substances as parts. (shrink)

A survey was conducted in a naturalistic setting, within wine tasting rooms, to explore how consumers' sustainability attitudes and subjective norms influence their decision to purchase wines from wineries which have adopted an environmental management program. The results indicate that both are significant predictors of intentions and explain over half of the variation in intentions to purchase. In addition, identifying environmental organization members is a useful approach in identifying a segment of consumers having stronger levels of these antecedents and, therefore, (...) more likely to purchase from wineries using sustainable grape growing practices (than non-members) Consumers who are environmental organization members are more likely to be interested in organic products, as well. Information on sustainable grape growing practices is relevant and influential for a specific segment of consumers, those consumers more passionate about the environment, and increases their intentions to purchase from wineries who have adopted these practices. (shrink)

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

ABSTRACTIn a bilingual educational setting, even when mathematical word problems are presented in one’s first language, students may still perform poorly if cognitive constraints such as working me...

We add to Archer's review with mention of sexual orientation differences in aggression and empathy, which suggest a biological basis for the mediating role of empathy. We also note that Archer's view of sex differences will illuminate discussion of conduct disorder, which can only be of help to researchers in this field.

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This investigation examines several key factors believed to promote human flourishing, specifically: Factor 1: Age, Education, & Healthcare, Factor 2: Labor Force Participation, Factor 3: Crime, Factor 4: Income, Factor 5: Youth Unemployment and Factor 6: Voting Behavior. Data was examined at the county level, and collected from a variety of US government and non-governmental organizations. Our investigation into the conditions necessary to promote human flourishing uses internal migration within the United States as the indicator of “unhappy” communities. The findings (...) reveal that all factors are important in emigration somewhere, but the factors vary for different counties. As a result, attempts to address the ills of society require an appreciation of geography and context. (shrink)

A large proportion of the total global burden of disease is caused by emergency medical conditions. Emergency care research is essential to improving emergency medicine but this research can raise some distinctive ethical challenges, especially with regard to (1) standard of care and risk–benefit assessment; (2) blurring of the roles of clinician and researcher; (3) enrolment of populations with intersecting vulnerabilities; (4) fair participant selection; (5) quality of consent; and (6) community engagement. Despite the importance of research to improve emergency (...) care in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) and the widely acknowledged ethical challenges, very little has been written on the ethics of emergency care research in LMICs. This paper examines the ethical and regulatory challenges to conducting emergency care research with human participants in LMICs. We outline key challenges, present potential solutions or frameworks for addressing these challenges, and identify gaps. Despite the ethical and regulatory challenges, conducting high-quality, ethical emergency care research in LMICs is possible and it is essential for global health. (shrink)

This is the fourth instalment of our census and study of the reception of the first nine editions of De iure belli ac pacis. Here we focus on the two versions that Johannes Janssonius issued in 1632, one with a copy of Mare liberum attached to it. This report outlines the place of the 1632 Janssonius edition in the context of his long-running rivalry with the printer Willem Blaeu and his firm. It then explores the typographical differences between the two (...) issues, their causes, and their significance for our understanding of the reception of the text. Finally, it provides the preliminary results of the census concerning the circulation and provenance of the fifty-three copies of this edition that we have found. We hope that this research note on the preliminary results will attract interest in this edition and that readers will kindly inform us of further copies. (shrink)

This article provides new information on the printing and readership history of the fifth edition of De iure belli ac pacis. Building on our earlier research on the way that the dispute between Willem Janszoon Blaeu and Johannes Janssonius influenced the publication of the 1631 edition of the text, this article studies how Blaeu harnessed his position to make the 1632 edition more reputable than the earlier version published by his rival. The article considers how, over four centuries, readers have (...) appreciated the quality of the production and three engaged with the text for radically different ends: Remigius Faesch, Baron von Boineburg, and Wendell Phillips. The article draws attention to the changes and continuities in reading and annotation patterns and offers preliminary insights into the themes that these influential readers focused on. We hope that it will inspire readers to bring further copies to our attention. (shrink)

This article constitutes the sixth instalment in our series on the census and study of the reception of the first nine editions of De iure belli ac pacis. This edition has long held a prominent place in studies and editions of Grotius’s work since it was the last published during his lifetime. The report first outlines the genesis of the edition in the context of Grotius’s relationship with Johann Blaeu (1596–1673) and Cornelius Blaeu (1610–1642), who had recently inherited the Blaeu (...) print firm from their father Willem. It then elucidates a number of crucial ways in which the 1642 edition differed from the five previous editions, especially via the addition of an extensive new series of annotations to ibp and a separate set addressed to the Epistle of Philemon. Finally, it concludes by providing the preliminary results of the census concerning the one hundred and twenty-one copies we have found. (shrink)

This chapter explores some general aspects of the tension between one’s role as a believer and one’s role as an appraiser of oneself as a believer in philosophy. The proposal is to replace true belief by knowledge in a principle of charity constitutive of content. Knowledge maximization need not make the ascription of knowledge come too cheap. By contrast, Davidson’s principle of charity gives good marks to an interpretation for having Stone Age people assent to many truths of quantum mechanics, (...) if it happens to fit the compositional structure of their language. Perhaps the underlying worries about knowledge maximization can be captured in a more abstract form. A subtler attempt to extract knowledge from Davidson’s principle of charity exploits beliefs that one knows. Knowledge maximization implies that our ancestors had some primitive knowledge as soon as they had some primitive beliefs; it is not as though archaeology suggests otherwise. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

What limits ought there be on a state’s ability to create a homogeneous society, to increase or perpetuate non-diversity, or to create hierarchies within existing diversity? This article examines those questions with reference to the Lieberman Plan—which proposes to transfer populated territories from Israel to the Palestine in exchange for Jewish settlements on the West Bank— as an abstract exercise in demographic transformation by the state. First the article considers if the Lieberman plan would “work”: Would it create the alterations (...) it proposes, and would those changes achieve a stable, peaceful, perhaps even just settlement? It finds that though there is debate about the range of effect, there is little doubt that transfer would alter the state’s demography. It then turns to the international standards that might govern the transfer of territory and the denaturalization of citizens, to see how they would characterize such a plan. It finds that comparisons to ethnic cleansing are inapposite, and that norms protecting citizenship are considerably more complex than they first appear—even allowing ethnically targeted denaturalization in some cases. The article then analyzes the loyalty provisions of the Lieberman Plan, and notes that, contrary to the usual normative assumption that citizenship is tied to the state, the foundations of citizenship are actually a habitual or formative link to a given territory, which in turn creates a right to citizenship not in any particular state, but in the one that incidentally is sovereign over that territory. This interaction of citizenship and territory, when considered together with norms requiring equal protection for all citizens, suggests that the polity has an interest in defining its own territorial scope, and thereby its membership. The legal regime is ambiguous, and therefore deliberations about this question are in the realm of politics. The article demonstrates how transfer’s assimilation to existing norms suggests a novel interpretation of selfdetermination with far-reaching consequences for both sides of the conflict. Finally, the article notes that international law, though it polices excesses, is largely silent on the principal determinant of demography: the fact of state control over territory. (shrink)

This book celebrates the work of Patricia Werhane, an iconic figure in business ethics. This festschrift is a collection of articles that build on Werhane’s contributions to business ethics in such areas as Employee Rights, the Legacy of Adam Smith, Moral Imagination, Women in Business, the development of the field of business ethics, and her contributions to such fields as Health Care, Education, Teaching, and Philosophy. All papers are new contributions to the management literature written by well-known business ethicists, such (...) as Norman Bowie, Richard De George, Ronald Duska, Edwin Hartman, Michael Hoffman, Mollie Painter-Morland, Mark Schwartz, Andrew Wicks, and others. The volume is comprised of articles that reflect on Werhane’s work as well as build on it as a way to advance further research. At the end of the festschrift, Pat Werhane provides responses to each chapter. The first chapter of the book also includes the overview of Patricia Werhane’s work and her academic career. The book is written to appeal to management scholars and graduate students interested in the areas of Business Ethics, Modern Capitalism, and Human Rights. Patricia Werhane is one of the most distinguished figures in the field of business ethics. She was a founder of the field, she is one of its leading scholars, and she has had a profound impact on the world of business practice. Among her many accomplishments, Pat is known for her original work on moral imagination, she is an acclaimed authority on employee rights in the workplace, and she is one of the leading scholars on Adam Smith. Having been active in Academia for over 50 years, Werhane is a prolific author of over a hundred articles and book chapters, and the author or editor of twenty-seven books, including Adam Smith and his Legacy for Modern Capitalism, Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making, and co-authored books Organization Ethics in Health Care, Alleviating Poverty Through Profitable Partnerships, Obstacles to Ethical Decision-Making, Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience, and Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility. (shrink)

The further scholarship investigates life forms the less those forms can be said to have a single, independent and lasting identity. The further scholarship delves into texts the less they too can be said to have a single, independent and lasting identity. This similarity is not simply an analogy. Life forms cannot be said to differ in a rigorous way from texts. On many levels and for many reasons, deconstruction and ecology should talk to one another. It is interesting to (...) contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. (shrink)

This chapter lays out a case that with the proper perspective on the place of epistemology within normative inquiry more generally, it is possible to appreciate what was on the right track about some of the early approaches to the analysis of knowledge, and to improve on the obvious failures which led them to be rejected. Drawing on more general principles about reasons, their weight, and their relationship to justification, it offers answers to problems about defeat and the conditional fallacy (...) that plagued early defeasibility analyses of knowledge and offers a sketch of a contemporary alternative that is motivated by the idea that knowledge requires the right kind of “match” between objective and subjective factors. (shrink)

It is not necessarily the case that we ever have experiences of self, but human beings do regularly report instances for which self is experienced as absent. That is there are times when body parts, mental states, or actions are felt to be alien. Here I sketch an explanatory framework for explaining these alienation experiences, a framework that also attempts to explain the “mental glue” whereby self is bound to body, mind, or action. The framework is a multi-dimensional model that (...) integrates personal and sub-personal components, psychological and neural processes. I then proceed to show how this model can be applied to explain the action-related passivity experiences of persons suffering from schizophrenia. I argue that a distinctive phenomenological mark of these experiences is that they are vividly felt, unlike ordinary actions (those taken to belong to self), and I seek to explain these heightened sensory experiences from within the proposed framework. I also propose hypotheses concerning such phenomena as thought insertion and anarchic hand syndrome that are motivated by this framework. Finally, I argue that the proposed model and view of self-experiences is consistent with several aspects of and theories of consciousness, especially theories which indicate that consciousness is more likely to be engaged when we are dealing with novelty or error—e.g. when self seems to have gone missing. I conclude by recommending that if we wish to learn about self, we would be well advised to attend closely to those times when it seems absent. (shrink)

This book is a sustained defence of traditional internalist epistemology. The aim is threefold: to address some key criticisms of internalism and show that they do not hit their mark, to articulate a detailed version of a central objection to externalism, and to illustrate how a consistent internalism can meet the charge that it fares no better in the face of this objection than does externalism itself. This original work will be recommended reading for scholars with an interest in (...) epistemology. (shrink)

Researchers are working to derive sperm from banked testicular tissue taken from pre-pubertal boys who face therapies or injuries that destroy sperm production. Success in deriving sperm from this tissue will help to preserve the option for these boys to have genetically related children later in life. For the twin moral reasons of preserving access and equity in regard to having such children, clinicians and researchers are justified in offering the option to the parents of all affected boys. However, some (...) parents may wish to decline the option to bank tissue from their boys because the technique may seem too unfamiliar or unusual, but over time people may become more comfortable with the technique as they have done with other novel assisted reproductive treatments. Other parents may wish to decline the option because of moral or religious reasons. A prominent natural law theory holds, for example, that the ARTs that would be involved in using sperm derived from banked tissue to produce a child are morally objectionable. Some parents might not want to bank tissue in order to shield their son from using ARTs they see as objectionable. Clinicians and researchers should respect parents who wish to decline banking tissue, but parents should ordinarily embrace choices that protect the possible interests their sons may have as adult men, including the wish to have genetically related children. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay is a translation of one of Salomon Maimon’s ethical writings, accompanied by a brief introduction. In it, Maimon proposes a correction of the Kantian moral principle of duty, as it is articulated both by Kant’s Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals and his Critique of Practical Reason. In particular, Maimon’s essay reveals the influence of Reinhold’s critique of Kant’s moral philosophy, especially regarding the role of incentives behind moral action. It reveals as well Maimon’s commitment to the primacy (...) of the theoretical over the practical, drawn from his reading of Maimonides and Spinoza. The essay, therefore, marks an important moment in the development of Maimon’s assimilation of Kantian philosophy, one often neglected in scholarship on his work. (shrink)

This essay is a translation of one of Salomon Maimon’s ethical writings, accompanied by a brief introduction. In it, Maimon proposes a correction of the Kantian moral principle of duty, as it is articulated both by Kant’s Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals and his Critique of Practical Reason. In particular, Maimon’s essay reveals the influence of Reinhold’s critique of Kant’s moral philosophy, especially regarding the role of incentives behind moral action. It reveals as well Maimon’s commitment to the primacy (...) of the theoretical over the practical, drawn from his reading of Maimonides and Spinoza. The essay, therefore, marks an important moment in the development of Maimon’s assimilation of Kantian philosophy, one often neglected in scholarship on his work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay seeks to clarify a facet of Montesquieu’s doux-commerce thesis. On the one hand, I agree with the scholarly consensus that Montesquieu was a doux-commerce thinker. Indeed, I argue that from the Persian Letters to The Spirit of the Laws he consistently presented self-interest as a psychological spring of action superior in point of humanity to virtue (the spring of ancient republics like Rome and Sparta). On the other hand, I contend that he went out of his way (...) to show that commercial regimes need not be characterized by ‘softness’ (mollesse), even if they are marked by ‘gentleness’ (douceur). Not only are these qualities conceptually distinct, but there is no reason (Montesquieu suggested) why they must go together in practice. Keeping in mind the distinction between douceur and mollesse helps to establish that Montesquieu made not only a doux-commerce argument but also a dur-commerce argument. In other words, he maintained that commerce went hand-in-hand with hardiness and vigour, as well as gentleness. (shrink)