Recent empirical work has offered strong support for ‘biased pluralism’ and ‘economic elite’ accounts of political power in the United States, according a central role to ‘business interest groups’ as a mechanism through which corporate influence is exerted. Here, we propose an additional channel of influence for corporate interests: the ‘policy-planning network,’ consisting of corporate-dominated foundations, think tanks, and elite policy-discussion groups. To evaluate this assertion, we consider one key policy-discussion group, the Council on Foreign Relations. We first briefly review (...) the origins of this organization and then review earlier findings on its influence. We then code CFR policy preferences on 295 foreign policy issues during the 1981–2002 period. In logistic regression analyses, we find that the preferences of more affluent citizens and the CFR were positive, statistically significant predictors of foreign policy outcomes while business interest group preferences were not. These findings are discussed with a consideration of the patterns of CFR ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ for the issues in our dataset. Although a full demonstration of a causal connection between corporate interests, the policy-planning network and policy outcomes requires further research, we conclude that this has been shown to be a plausible mechanism through which corporate interests are represented and that ‘biased pluralism’ researchers should include it in their future investigations. (shrink)

In Chapter 2 of the Philosophical Fragments, Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus poetises about a “king who loved a maiden.” Climacus concludes this venture with a bold claim: what he has just described is “so different from any human poem” that it should not be regarded as a poem at all, but as “the wonder” [Vidunderet] which leads one to exclaim in adoration that “[t]his thought did not arise in my own heart!” In the subsequent chapter of Philosophical Fragments, (...) Climacus proceeds to offer a number of arguments against demonstrations of God’s existence, leading many scholars to conclude that he represents an unequivocally anti-rationalist perspective. Against such interpretations, this paper will seek to highlight how Climacus’ claims track those of the seventeenth century Dutch lens-grinder and rationalist philosopher, Baruch Spinoza. From this, it will be argued that “the wonder” in Climacus’ thought takes the form of an indirect, ethico-existentialist argument for the truth of Christianity’s incarnate God. (shrink)

Shanker & King argue for a shift in the focus of ape language research from an emphasis on information processing to a dynamic systems approach. We differ from these authors in our understanding of how this “new paradigm” emerged and in our perceptions of its limitations. We see information processing and dynamic systems as complementary approaches in the study of communication.

Nanomedicine is yielding new and improved treatments and diagnostics for a range of diseases and disorders. Nanomedicine applications incorporate materials and components with nanoscale dimensions where novel physiochemical properties emerge as a result of size-dependent phenomena and high surface-to-mass ratio. Nanotherapeutics and in vivo nanodiagnostics are a subset of nanomedicine products that enter the human body. These include drugs, biological products, implantable medical devices, and combination products that are designed to function in the body in ways unachievable at larger scales. (...) Nanotherapeutics andin vivonanodiagnostics incorporate materials that are engineered at the nanoscale to express novel properties that are medicinally useful. These nanomedicine applications can also contain nanomaterials that are biologically active, producing interactions that depend on biological triggers. Examples include nanoscale formulations of insoluble drugs to improve bioavailability and pharmacokinetics, drugs encapsulated in hollow nanoparticles with the ability to target and cross cellular and tissue membranes and to release their payload at a specific time or location, imaging agents that demonstrate novel optical properties to aid in locating micrometastases, and antimicrobial and drug-eluting components or coatings of implantable medical devices such as stents. (shrink)

In March 1996, the General Accounting Office issued the report Scientific Research: Continued Vigilance Critical to Protecting Human Subjects. It stated that “an inherent conflict of interest exists when physician-researchers include their patients in research protocols. If the physicians do not clearly distinguish between research and treatment in their attempt to inform subjects, the possible benefits of a study can be overemphasized and the risks minimized.” The report also acknowledged that “the line between research and treatment is not always clear (...) to clinicians. Controversy exists regarding whether certain medical procedures should be categorized as research.”This problem currently plagues gene transfer research. A few months prior to the GAO report, an ad hoc committee appointed by National Institutes of Health Director Harold Varmus expressed similar concerns in its assessment of NIH investment in research on gene therapy. (shrink)

The King Report on Corporate Governance (1994) evoked unprecedented interest in corporate governance in South Africa. This does not mean that corporate governance was not an issue of concern before the release of this historical report. To the contrary, corporate governance in its broader sense has been at stake since the inception of the first publicly owned companies in South Africa. This article intends to give an overview of corporate governance in South Africa. It starts by making a distinction (...) between broad and narrow conceptions of corporate governance. Before applying this distinction to the practice of corporate governance in South Africa, a brief overview of the corporate landscape in South Africa is provided. Then the South African situation with regard to broad and narrow corporate governance respectively is analysed. The article ends with a discussion of the review of corporate governance that currently is in the making in South Africa. Throughout the article both the financial and ethical dimensions of corporate governance is attended to. (shrink)

The King Report on Corporate Governance (1994) evoked unprecedented interest in corporate governance in South Africa. This does not mean that corporate governance was not an issue of concern before the release of this historical report. To the contrary, corporate governance in its broader sense has been at stake since the inception of the first publicly owned companies in South Africa. This article intends to give an overview of corporate governance in South Africa. It starts by making a distinction (...) between broad and narrow conceptions of corporate governance. Before applying this distinction to the practice of corporate governance in South Africa, a brief overview of the corporate landscape in South Africa is provided. Then the South African situation with regard to broad and narrow corporate governance respectively is analysed. The article ends with a discussion of the review of corporate governance that currently is in the making in South Africa. Throughout the article both the financial and ethical dimensions of corporate governance is attended to. (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)

The King Report on Corporate Governance (1994) evoked unprecedented interest in corporate governance in South Africa. This does not mean that corporate governance was not an issue of concern before the release of this historical report. To the contrary, corporate governance in its broader sense has been at stake since the inception of the first publicly owned companies in South Africa. This article intends to give an overview of corporate governance in South Africa. It starts by making a distinction (...) between broad and narrow conceptions of corporate governance. Before applying this distinction to the practice of corporate governance in South Africa, a brief overview of the corporate landscape in South Africa is provided. Then the South African situation with regard to broad and narrow corporate governance respectively is analysed. The article ends with a discussion of the review of corporate governance that currently is in the making in South Africa. Throughout the article both the financial and ethical dimensions of corporate governance is attended to. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS I05 1120a): these and much else form models of the meticulousness and also the daring with which such discussions should be conducted. THOMAS G. ROSENMEYER University of Washington Religious Philosophy, A Group ol Essays.By Harry Austryn Wolfson. (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1961. Pp. xii + 278. $6.00.) For those who have never dared to take the plunge into one of Professor Wolfson's massive studies--the two-volume sets (...) on Philo and Spinoza, for instance, or the first part of The Philosophy of the Church Fathers--these ten essays offer a series of brief but enlightening introductory paddles. The eleventh piece, a concluding Sermonette, is neither enlightening nor a happy introduction to a rigorous mind. The essays, ranging over a considerable number of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular thinkers, are entitled as follows: "The Philonic God of Revelation and His Latter-day Deniers"; "Extradeical and Intradeical Interpretations of Platonic Ideas"; "Immortality and Resurrection in the Philosophy of the Church Fathers"; "Philosophical Implications of the Theology of Cyril of Jerusalem"; "Philosophical Implications of Arianism and Apollinarianism"; "Saint Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy"; "Ibn Khaldun on Attributes and Predestination "; "Causality and Freedom in Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume"; "The Veracity of Scripture from Philo to Spinoza"; "Spinoza and the Religion of the Past." Despite this wide variety of topics, the book is held together, Wolfson assures us, by a "common theme" (p. v). To accept this theme is, in effect, to look at the history of Western religious philosophy from New Testament times to Spinoza's in a very special way. Picking up three histories of philosophy at random, I find that Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy mentions the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20? mC.--A.D. 54?) on two pages; B. A. G. Fuller's History of Philosophy devotes about three and a half pages to Philo but concludes that "Philo seems to have had no disciples of note and no direct influence, at any rate, upon the century and a half that intervenes between his death and the birth of Plotinus" (p. 305); W. T. Jones in his History of Western Philosophy (Vol. I) rates Philo's worth at just over a page and a caustic footnote. If, however, we look at religious philosophy in Wolfson's way, we see Philo as the root and determining origin of all medieval philosophizing, Jewish, Christian and Muslim ; we further see the medieval philosophy begun by Philo as a homogeneous system of thought, lying between pagan Greek speculations and the secular systems of the seventeenth century. Wolfson writes: 106 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Ostensibly Philo is only the interpreter of the Hebrew Scriptures in terms of Greek philosophy. But actually he is more than that. He is the interpreter of Greek philosophy in terms of certain fundamental teachings of his Hebrew Scripture, whereby he revolutionised philosophy and remade it into what became the common philosophy of the three religions with cognate Scriptures, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (p. v). In all the essays the topics are taken partly as Philonic in origin; it is Wolfson's aim to make the quarrels of medieval and later thinkers more intelligible in the light of their positions' intellectual ancestry. The result of his approach is a series of amazingly dexterous historical investigations; the reader moves with quite unexpected ease through intricate thirty-page discussions, each carrying some hundred or so footnotes of far-flung references to Plato, Aristotle, Scripture, Jewish and Arabic commentators, Patristic hagglers, Spinoza, Hume, Mill, et alii. The burden of erudition is wielded with simplicity and grace. Where there are historical obscurities and misunderstandings to be cleared up, one reads Wolfson with gratitude and enjoyment. Perhaps I can best fulfill my role as reviewer by summarizing part of his sixth and most exciting chapter, that on the controversy of Pelagius and Augustine over human freedom. Here Wolfson sets out to reverse history's verdict: to show Pelagius' account of freedom as keeping to "the original Christian belief"; to show Augustine's views as heretical by the measure of previous Christian tradition. He begins with much-documented observations that Greek pagan philosophy establishes a tension in man between the powers of... (shrink)

In his 1988 review of On the Plurality of Worlds (Lycan [1988]), William Lycan argued that what he called Lewis's 'mad-dog modal realism' (also 'rape-and-loot modal realism' and 'nuclear-holocaust modal realism' - I suspect that some reference to the supposed extremity of Lewis's position is intended) rested upon an unanalysed modal notion. Lycan accepted that actualists all seemed to be stuck with such unanalysed notions (adding that his own was the notion of compatibility as applied to pairs of properties), but (...) argued that Lewis's notion of worlds was also a modal primitive: 'World' for him has to mean 'possible world', since the very flesh-and-bloodiness [which relieves him of the sort of abstraction indulged in by actualists] prevents him from admitting impossibilia. (Lycan [1988], p.46) Lycan's main concerns in this review go back to his earlier paper 'The Trouble with Possible Worlds' (Lycan [1979]), and are taken up again in his PAS paper: The ruling out of impossible worlds is a serious liability [...] For semantics needs impossible worlds. Though standard modal logics may trade just in possible states of affairs, the semantics of conditionals must deal with inconsistent beliefs. (Lycan [1991], p.224) He goes on to claim that the actualist has no problem with impossible worlds. An impossible world is just - e.g. - a set of propositions (one of which happens to be inconsistent). (loc.cit.) Whatever the truth of this in principle, most actualists have either explicitly or implicitly excluded possible worlds from their theories.* It is true, nevertheless, that Lewis has a clear problem with the very idea of worlds at which logically incompatible propositions are true. Lycan attempts to exploit this as follows. (shrink)

Two recently published inscriptions afford new insights into this subject. They were published separately and independently within a year or two of one another. Much is now to be gained by considering them together. The first inscription, found at Philippi in 1936, published by C. Vatin in Proc. 8th Epigr. Conf. , 259–70, and published with a fuller commentary by L. Missitzis in The Ancient World 12 , 3–14, records the decision by Alexander the Great on the use of lands (...) given by his father, Philip II, and in some cases confirmed by himself. The second inscription, found at the site of ancient Kalindoia in 1982, was published with exemplary speed and an excellent commentary by I. P. Vokotopoulou in Ancient Macedonia 4 , 87–114. It records the names of the priests of Asclepius on a stele dedicated to Apollo; and in the preamble it mentions the name of Alexander, being Alexander the Great. Philippi and Kalindoia were both within the limits of the kingdom of Philip and Alexander. (shrink)

"Prophecy by magic is a myth. But prophecy by science is a fact." With these words, Lenin begins his article "Prophetic Words" [Prorocheskie slova], in Poln. sobr. soch. [Complete Works], Vol. 36, p. 472. Written in the middle of 1918, a very difficult time for the young Soviet republic, it is devoted entirely to Engels' forecast three decades earlier of the possible outcomes of a world war. With amazing forecasting ability, Engels described the destruction and upheavals that war would cause, (...) the downfall of capitalist empires and the inevitable triumph of the proletariat. Engels warned the kings and statesmen of the capitalist class: "If you unleash forces with which you will not subsequently be able to contend, then, no matter how things develop, at the end of the tragedy you will be a ruin, and the triumph of the proletariat will either already have been won or in any case be inevitable.". (shrink)

Part I: WHAT IS ETHICS? Plato: Socratic Morality: Crito. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part II: ETHICAL RELATIVISM VERSUS ETHICAL OBJECTIVISM. Herodotus: Custom is King. Thomas Aquinas: Objectivism: Natural Law. Ruth Benedict: A Defense of Ethical Relativism. Louis Pojman: A Critique of Ethical Relativism. Gilbert Harman: Moral Relativism Defended. Alan Gewirth: The Objective Status of Human Rights. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part III: MORALITY, SELF-INTEREST AND FUTURE SELVES. Plato: Why Be Moral? Richard Taylor: On the Socratic Dilemma. David Gauthier: Morality (...) and Advantage. Gregory Kavka: A Reconciliation Project. Derek Parfit: Later Selves and Moral Principles. Bernard Williams: Persons, Character, and Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part IV: VALUE. Jeremy Bentham: Classical Hedonism. Robert Nozick: The Experience Machine. Richard Taylor: Value and the Origin of Right and Wrong. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Transvaluation of Values. Derek Parfit: What Makes Someone’s Life Go Best? Thomas Nagel: Value: The View from Nowhere. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part V: UTILITARIANISM AND CONSEQUENTIALISM. John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism. J.J.C. Smart: Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism. Kai Nielsen: Against Moral Conservatism. Bernard Williams: Against Utilitarianism. John Hospers: Rule-Utilitarianism. Robert Nozick: Side Constraints. Peter Singer: Famine, Affluence and Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VI: KANTIAN AND DEONTOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. Immanuel Kant: Foundation for the Metaphysic of Morals. W. D. Ross: What Makes Right Acts Right? Onora O’Neill: Kantian Formula of the End in Itself and World Hunger. Thomas Nagel: Moral Luck. Philippa Foot: Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives. Judith Jarvis Thomson: Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VII: CONTRACTARIAN ETHICAL SYSTEMS. Thomas Hobbes: The Leviathan. David Gauthier: Why Contractarianism? John Rawls: Contractualism: Justice as Fairness. T.M. Scanlon: Contractualism and Utilitarianism. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VIII: VIRTUE-BASED ETHICAL SYSTEMS. Aristotle: The Ethics of Virtue. Bernard Mayo: Virtue and the Moral Life. William Frankena: A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethics. Walter Schaller: Are Virtues No More than Dispositions to Obey Moral Rules? Alasdair MacIntyre: The Nature of the Virtues. Susan Wolf: Moral Saints. Louis P. Pojman: In Defense of Moral Saints. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part IX: THE FACT/VALUE PROBLEM: METAETHICS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. David Hume: On Reason and the Emotions: The Fact/Value Distinction. G. E. Moore: Non-Naturalism. A. J. Ayer: Emotivism. R. M. Hare: Prescriptivism: The Structure of Ethics and Morals. Geoffrey Warnock: The Object of Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part X: MORAL REALISM AND THE CHALLENGE OF SKEPTICISM. J.L. Mackie: The Subjectivity of Values. Jonathan Harrison: A Critique of Mackie’s Error Theory. Gilbert Harman: Moral Nihilism. Nicholas Sturgeon: Moral Explanations. Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Bruce Russell: Two Forms of Ethical Skepticism. Michael Smith: A Defense of Moral Realism. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part XI: RELIGION AND ETHICS. Plato: Morality and Religion. Immanuel Kant: God and Immortality as Necessary Postulates of Morality. George Mavrodes: Religious and the Queerness of Morality. Kai Nielson: Ethics Without God. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part XII: CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES TO CLASSICAL ETHICAL THEORY. Part A. Sociobiology and the Question of Moral Responsibility. Charles Darwin: Ethics and the Descent of Man. E.O.Wilson: Sociobiology and Ethics. Michael Ruse: Evolution and Ethics: The Sociobiological Approach. Elliot Sober: Prospects for an Evolutionary Ethics. J.L. Mackie: The Law of the Jungle, Evolution and Morality. Suggestions for Further Readingon Sociobiology. Part B. The Challenge of Determinism to Moral Responsibility and Desert. Galen Strawson: The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility. Louis Pojman: Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility:A Response to Galen Strawson. Richard Taylor: A Libertarian Defense of Free Will and Responsibility. Suggestions for Further Reading on Moral Responsibility. Glossary of Ethical Terms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS I05 1120a): these and much else form models of the meticulousness and also the daring with which such discussions should be conducted. THOMAS G. ROSENMEYER University of Washington Religious Philosophy, A Group ol Essays.By Harry Austryn Wolfson. (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1961. Pp. xii + 278. $6.00.) For those who have never dared to take the plunge into one of Professor Wolfson's massive studies--the two-volume sets (...) on Philo and Spinoza, for instance, or the first part of The Philosophy of the Church Fathers--these ten essays offer a series of brief but enlightening introductory paddles. The eleventh piece, a concluding Sermonette, is neither enlightening nor a happy introduction to a rigorous mind. The essays, ranging over a considerable number of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular thinkers, are entitled as follows: "The Philonic God of Revelation and His Latter-day Deniers"; "Extradeical and Intradeical Interpretations of Platonic Ideas"; "Immortality and Resurrection in the Philosophy of the Church Fathers"; "Philosophical Implications of the Theology of Cyril of Jerusalem"; "Philosophical Implications of Arianism and Apollinarianism"; "Saint Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy"; "Ibn Khaldun on Attributes and Predestination "; "Causality and Freedom in Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume"; "The Veracity of Scripture from Philo to Spinoza"; "Spinoza and the Religion of the Past." Despite this wide variety of topics, the book is held together, Wolfson assures us, by a "common theme" (p. v). To accept this theme is, in effect, to look at the history of Western religious philosophy from New Testament times to Spinoza's in a very special way. Picking up three histories of philosophy at random, I find that Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy mentions the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20? mC.--A.D. 54?) on two pages; B. A. G. Fuller's History of Philosophy devotes about three and a half pages to Philo but concludes that "Philo seems to have had no disciples of note and no direct influence, at any rate, upon the century and a half that intervenes between his death and the birth of Plotinus" (p. 305); W. T. Jones in his History of Western Philosophy (Vol. I) rates Philo's worth at just over a page and a caustic footnote. If, however, we look at religious philosophy in Wolfson's way, we see Philo as the root and determining origin of all medieval philosophizing, Jewish, Christian and Muslim ; we further see the medieval philosophy begun by Philo as a homogeneous system of thought, lying between pagan Greek speculations and the secular systems of the seventeenth century. Wolfson writes: 106 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Ostensibly Philo is only the interpreter of the Hebrew Scriptures in terms of Greek philosophy. But actually he is more than that. He is the interpreter of Greek philosophy in terms of certain fundamental teachings of his Hebrew Scripture, whereby he revolutionised philosophy and remade it into what became the common philosophy of the three religions with cognate Scriptures, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (p. v). In all the essays the topics are taken partly as Philonic in origin; it is Wolfson's aim to make the quarrels of medieval and later thinkers more intelligible in the light of their positions' intellectual ancestry. The result of his approach is a series of amazingly dexterous historical investigations; the reader moves with quite unexpected ease through intricate thirty-page discussions, each carrying some hundred or so footnotes of far-flung references to Plato, Aristotle, Scripture, Jewish and Arabic commentators, Patristic hagglers, Spinoza, Hume, Mill, et alii. The burden of erudition is wielded with simplicity and grace. Where there are historical obscurities and misunderstandings to be cleared up, one reads Wolfson with gratitude and enjoyment. Perhaps I can best fulfill my role as reviewer by summarizing part of his sixth and most exciting chapter, that on the controversy of Pelagius and Augustine over human freedom. Here Wolfson sets out to reverse history's verdict: to show Pelagius' account of freedom as keeping to "the original Christian belief"; to show Augustine's views as heretical by the measure of previous Christian tradition. He begins with much-documented observations that Greek pagan philosophy establishes a tension in man between the powers of... (shrink)

In 1958, economist A. W. Phillips published an article describing what he observed to be the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment; subsequently, the "Phillips curve" became a central concept in macroeconomic analysis and policymaking. But today's Phillips curve is not the same as the original one from fifty years ago; the economy, our understanding of price setting behavior, the determinants of inflation, and the role of monetary policy have evolved significantly since then. In this book, some of the top (...) economists working today reexamine the theoretical and empirical validity of the Phillips curve in its more recent specifications. The contributors consider such questions as what economists have learned about price and wage setting and inflation expectations that would improve the way we use and formulate the Phillips curve, what the Phillips curve approach can teach us about inflation dynamics, and how these lessons can be applied to improving the conduct of monetary policy. ContributorsLawrence Ball, Ben Bernanke, Oliver Blanchard, V. V. Chari, William T. Dickens, Stanley Fischer, Jeff Fuhrer, Jordi Gali, Michael T. Kiley, Robert G. King, Donald L. Kohn, Yolanda K. Kodrzycki, Jane Sneddon Little, Bartisz Mackowiak, N. Gregory Mankiw, Virgiliu Midrigan, Giovanni P. Olivei, Athanasios Orphanides, Adrian R. Pagan, Christopher A. Pissarides, Lucrezia Reichlin, Paul A. Samuelson, Christopher A. Sims, Frank R. Smets, Robert M. Solow, Jürgen Stark, James H. Stock, Lars E. O. Svensson, John B. Taylor, Mark W. Watson. (shrink)

This is a collection of the key articles written by renowned Wittgenstein scholar, G.P. Baker, on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, published posthumously. Following Baker’s death in 2002, the volume has been edited by collaborator and partner, Katherine Morris. Contains articles previously only available in other languages, and one previously unpublished paper. Completely distinct from the widely-known work Baker did with P.M.S. Hacker in the Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations.

Culture has been identified as a significant determinant of ethical attitudes of business managers. This research studies the impact of culture on the ethical attitudes of business managers in India, Korea and the United States using multivariate statistical analysis. Employing Geert Hofstede's cultural typology, this study examines the relationship between his five cultural dimensions (individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long-term orientation) and business managers' ethical attitudes. The study uses primary data collected from 345 business manager participants of Executive (...) MBA programs in selected business schools in India, Korea and the United States using Hofstede's Value Survey Module (94) and an instrument designed by the researchers to measure respondents' ethical attitudes (attitudes toward business ethics in general and toward twelve common questionable practices in particular). Results indicate that national culture has a strong influence on business managers' ethical attitudes. In addition to national culture, respondents' general attitudes toward business ethics are related to their personal integrity; their attitudes toward questionable business practices are related to the external environment and gender, as well as to their personal integrity. A strong relationship exists between cultural dimensions of individualism and power distance and respondents' ethical attitudes toward certain questionable practices. The analysis of the relationship between cultural dimensions of masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation and respondents' ethical attitudes toward questionable practices produced mixed results, likely due to the lack of notable differences in cultural dimension scores among the countries surveyed. (shrink)

Among the most outstanding discoveries of the last century is one that is not quite as momentous as the theory of relativity or cybernetics. It may even still be enigmatic. It has no one single author, it is not expressed in a single formula, conception, or invention. Nonetheless it is worth all the others combined.

In ‘Wittgenstein on Language and Rules’, Professor N. Malcolm took us to task for misinterpreting Wittgenstein's arguments on the relationship between the concept of following a rule and the concept of community agreement on what counts as following a given rule. Not that we denied that there are any grammatical connections between these concepts. On the contrary, we emphasized that a rule and an act in accord with it make contact in language. Moreover we argued that agreement in judgments and (...) in definitions is indeed necessary for a shared language. But we denied that the concept of a language is so tightly interwoven with the concept of a community of speakers as to preclude its applicabilty to someone whose use of signs is not shared by others. Malcolm holds that ‘This is an unwitting reduction of Wittgenstein's originality. That human agreement is necessary for “shared” language is not so striking a thought as that it is essential for language simpliciter.’ Though less striking, we believe that it has the merit of being a true thought. We shall once more try to show both that it is correct, and that it is a correct account of Wittgenstein's arguments. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Tractatus and rules of logical syntax From logical syntax to philosophical grammar Rules and rule‐formulations Philosophy and grammar The scope of grammar Some morals.

The dictum ‘“ought” implies “can”’ has a status in moral philosophy in some respects like that of ‘a good player needs good co-ordination’ in talk about ball-games. Clearly, you say something important but not conclusive about proficiency in playing a ball-game when you say that it requires good co-ordination: similarly, you say something important but not conclusive about obligation when you say that it implies a certain possibility or power or ability. Each dictum is a reminder: the one about such (...) courses of physical instruction, the other about such exhortations to duty, as are worth persevering with. It would be hopeless to keep on teaching a boy the moves and tricks of rugby football if he could never co-ordinate well enough to get his eye in, so to speak. Correspondingly, it would be meaningless to recommend that someone ought to do something the specification of which involved a contradiction, and pointless to suggest that he ought to do something which, for quite general reasons, was not, and was certain to remain not, within his power. So each dictum expresses a bluff, no-nonsense wisdom which we should count on before involving ourselves in certain more detailed commitments. But probably this is as far as the comparison between the two sayings can well be taken. (shrink)

The Covid‐19 pandemic has concentrated bioethics attention on the “lifeboat ethics” of rationing and fair allocation of scarce medical resources, such as testing, intensive care unit beds, and ventilators. This focus drives ethics resources away from persistent and systemic problems—in particular, the structural injustices that give rise to health disparities affecting disadvantaged communities of color. Bioethics, long allied with academic medicine and highly attentive to individual decision‐making, has largely neglected its responsibility to address these difficult “upstream” issues. It is time (...) to broaden our teaching, research, and practice to match the breadth of the field in order to help address these significant societal inequities and unmet health needs. (shrink)

In recent years we have seen a dramatic shift, in several different areas of communication studies, from an information-theoretic to a dynamic systems paradigm. In an information processing system, communication, whether between cells, mammals, apes, or humans, is said to occur when one organism encodes information into a signal that is transmitted to another organism that decodes the signal. In a dynamic system, all of the elements are continuously interacting with and changing in respect to one another, and an aggregate (...) pattern emerges from this mutual co-action. Whereas the information-processing paradigm looks at communication as a linear, binary sequence of events, the dynamic systems paradigm looks at the relation between behaviors and how the whole configuration changes over time. One of the most dramatic examples of the significance of shifting from an information processing to a dynamic systems paradigm can be found in the debate over the interpretation of recent advances in ape language research (ALR). To some extent, many of the early ALR studies reinforced the stereotype that animal communication is functional and stimulus bound, precisely because they were based on an information-processing paradigm that promoted a static model of communicative development. But Savage-Rumbaugh's recent results with bonobos has introduced an entirely new dimension into this debate. Shifting the terms of the discussion from an information-processing to a dynamic systems paradigm not only highlights the striking differences between Savage-Rumbaugh's research and earlier ALR studies, but further, it sheds illuminating light on the factors that underpin the development of communication skills in great apes and humans, and the relationship between communicative development and the development of language. Key Words: apes; ape language research (ALR); brain development; co-regulation; communication; dynamic systems; language development; symbols. (shrink)