Fraud, speculative bubbles and collapse, plus the resulting bankruptcies and hard times are a continuing part of the corporate environment. The 21st century is no exception, and its first decade has seen more than its share of abuse. This is somewhat surprising, given the level of regulation and oversight required. The focus here is primarily on Enron as a microcosm of all that can go wrong in a sophisticated, high-tech environment. Enron represents the long-term use of greed based primarily on (...) executive compensation incentives; poor corporate governance; executives willing to break the law or overlook others who did; the use of political lobbying; plus accommodating auditors, attorneys, analysts and regulators. Other fraud and abuse cases considered include WorldCom, Tyco, and Adelphi. In addition, the widespread corruption associated with the stock options scandals and the current housing collapse/banking crisis are reviewed, suggesting that the massive regulatory effort of Sarbanes-Oxley and other reforms have not solved the underlying problems. (shrink)

In chapter 3 of Wild Animal Ethics Johannsen argues for a collective obligation based on beneficence to intervene in nature in order to reduce the suffering of wild animals. In the same chapter he claims that the non-identity problem is merely a “theoretical puzzle” which doesn’t affect our reasons for intervention. In this paper I argue that the non-identity problem affects both the strength and the nature of our reasons to intervene. By intervening in nature on a large scale we (...) change which animals come into existence. In doing so, we enable harmful animals to inflict harms on other animals, and we put other animals in harm’s way. The harms that these animals will inflict and endure are foreseeable. Furthermore, since non-human animals aren’t moral agents, harmful animals cannot be morally responsible for their harmful actions. I argue therefore that by causing animals to exist, knowing that they will inflict and suffer harms, we become morally responsible for those harms. By engaging in identity-affecting actions then we take on secondary moral duties towards the animals we have thereby caused to exist, and these secondary moral duties may be extremely demanding, even more so than the initial costs of intervention. Finally, these duties are duties of justice rather than duties of beneficence, and as such are more stringent than purely beneficence-based moral reasons. Furthermore, this conclusion flows naturally from several plausible principles which Johannsen explicitly endorses. (shrink)

Senior managers are important to the successful management of ethics in organizations. Therefore, their perceptions of organizational ethics are important. In this study, we propose that senior managers are likely to have a more positive perception of organizational ethics than lower level employees do largely because of their managerial role and their corresponding identification with the organization and need to protect the organization’s image as well as their own identity. By contrast, lower level employees are more likely to be cynical (...) about the organization’s ethics. In order to compare senior managers’ and lower level employees’ perceptions of ethics in the organization, we surveyed randomly selected senior managers and lower level employees in three firms. We found that perceptions of ethics in the organization differed predictably across levels, with senior managers’ perceptions being significantly more positive and lower level employees’ perceptions being more negative. Implications for practice and research are discussed. (shrink)

A prominent and respected philosopher of animal rights law and ethical theory, Gary L. Francione is known for his criticism of animal welfare laws and regulations, his abolitionist theory of animal rights, and his promotion of veganism and nonviolence as the baseline principles of the abolitionist movement. In this collection, Francione advances the most radical theory of animal rights to date. Unlike Peter Singer, Francione maintains that we cannot morally justify using animals under any circumstances, and unlike Tom Regan, (...) Francione's theory applies to all sentient beings, not only to those who have more sophisticated cognitive abilities. (shrink)

Directed panspermia is the deliberate seeding of lifeless planets with microbes, in the hopes that, over evolutionary timescales, they will give rise to a complex self-sustaining biosphere on the target planet. Due to the immense distances and timescales involved, human beings are unlikely ever to see the fruits of their labours. Such missions must therefore be justified by appeal to values independent of human wellbeing. In this paper I investigate the values that a directed panspermia mission might promote. Paying special (...) attention to the outcome in which sentient animals evolve, I argue that we have strong reasons to believe the value of a mission would be negative. Research on wild animal suffering has shown that there is a huge amount of suffering among wild animals on Earth. I argue that there are structural features of evolution by natural selection which explain the prevalence of suffering on Earth, and make it predictable that suffering would prevail on the target planet too. Finally, using insights from procreative ethics I argue on non-consequentialist grounds that creators have duties to their sentient creations which cannot be met in directed panspermia missions. (shrink)

Drawing heavily on recent empirical research to update R.M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism and expand Hare's treatment of "intuitive level rules," Gary Varner considers in detail the theory's application to animals while arguing that Hare should have recognized a hierarchy of persons, near-persons, & the merely sentient.

Gary Steiner argues that ethologists and philosophers in the analytic and continental traditions have largely failed to advance an adequate explanation of animal behavior. Critically engaging the positions of Marc Hauser, Daniel Dennett, Donald Davidson, John Searle, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, among others, Steiner shows how the Western philosophical tradition has forced animals into human experiential categories in order to make sense of their cognitive abilities and moral status and how desperately we need a new approach to animal (...) rights. Steiner rejects the traditional assumption that a lack of formal rationality confers an inferior moral status on animals vis-à-vis human beings. Instead, he offers an associationist view of animal cognition in which animals grasp and adapt to their environments without employing concepts or intentionality. Steiner challenges the standard assumption of liberal individualism according to which humans have no obligations of justice toward animals. Instead, he advocates a "cosmic holism" that attributes a moral status to animals equivalent to that of people. Arguing for a relationship of justice between humans and nature, Steiner emphasizes our kinship with animals and the fundamental moral obligations entailed by this kinship. (shrink)

Two welcome extensions of evolutionary thinking have come to prominence over the last thirty years: the so-called ’extended evolutionary synthesis’ (EES) and debate about biological kinds and individuals. These two agendas have, however, remained orthogonal to one another. The EES has mostly restricted itself to widening the explanations of adaptation offered by the preceding ’modern evolutionary synthesis’ by including additional mechanisms of inheritance and variation; while discussion of biological kinds has turned toward philosophical questions of essential vs. contingent properties of (...) life forms and realist vs. epistemological approaches to categorization and classification. Here we attempt to broaden the explanatory scope of evolutionary theory by linking these two agendas. We expand on the mechanistic orientation of the EES, using new understandings of networked systems of components in order to engage the distinct intellectual challenge of the origination of “historical kinds”. With this phrase we designate a subset of natural kinds that acquires, through evolutionary processes, a quasi-independent lineage-history. Such kinds emerge in both biology and culture, and we enlarge the limited number of historical kinds that have thus far been recognized in evolutionary biology in a series of paradigmatic exemplars, from genes and cell types to rituals and music. For each exemplar we discern specific mechanisms by which it arose and persists; comparing these, we suggest a general unity in the ways in which diverse historical kinds originate. (shrink)

In _Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism_, Gary Steiner illuminates postmodernism's inability to produce viable ethical and political principles. Ethics requires notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Thus, much of what is published under the rubric of postmodernist theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics. Steiner demonstrates this through a provocative critique of postmodernist approaches to the moral status of animals, set against the background of a broader indictment of (...) postmodernism's failure to establish clear principles for action. He revisits the ideas of Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, together with recent work by their American interpreters, and shows that the basic terms of postmodern thought are incompatible with definitive claims about the moral status of animals--as well as humans. Steiner also identifies the failures of liberal humanist thought in regards to this same moral dilemma, and he encourages a rethinking of humanist ideas in a way that avoids the anthropocentric limitations of traditional humanist thought. Drawing on the achievements of the Stoics and Kant, he builds on his earlier ideas of cosmic holism and non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism to arrive at a more concrete foundation for animal rights. (shrink)

Volume 31 contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2014-15. Works: _Symposium_, _Republic_, _Euthyphro_, Proclus’s _De malorum_, _Sophist_, _Statesman_; topics: eros, tripartite soul, what the gods love, evil, Homeric motifs.

The volume contains papers and commentaries presented to the _Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy_ during the academic year 2015-16. Works: Phaedrus, Republic, Apology, Laws, Seventh Letter, Stoic texts. Topics: Stoic blending, reciprocal eros, perception in tripartite soul, Stoic identity, Plato’s politics and events.

Written by a former student of Heidegger, this book examines the relationship between the philosophy and the politics of a celebrated teacher and the allure that Nazism held out for scholars committed to revolutionary nihilism.

In this article, the authors examine post-concussion syndrome (PCS) from an existential-phenomenological perspective, specifically as a Heideggerian analysis of Dasein (or Daseinsanalysis; Condrau, 1988). As a medical syndrome, PCS was once defined in terms of its pathophysiology. However, in the absence of reliable evidence of pathophysiology, PCS has been removed from the DSM-5. We have suspended the natural attitude, in this case the biomedical model, and have taken seriously the symptoms of PCS as indications that meaningful changes have occurred within (...) the structure of the patient’s existence. Following the medical theories of Goldstein (1995) and Gadamer (1996), the authors describe the significance of PCS as it is lived by Tyrese, an NCAA Division II football player whose series of concussions left him permanently sidelined. Careful consideration is paid to the existential dimensions of the syndrome, specifically the backgrounds of temporality, sociality, and attunement. In conclusion, a new approach to rehabilitation is explored. (shrink)

In a familiar moral dilemma faced by physicians who care for the dying, some patients who are within days or hours of death may experience suffering in a degree that cannot be relieved by ordinary levels of analgesia. In such cases, it may sometimes be possible to honor a competent patient's request for pain relief only by giving an injection of narcotics in a dosage so large that the patient's death is thereby hastened. Doctors rightly worry that taking an action (...) likely to result in a patient's death may violate the Hippocratic injunction against the direct killing of anyone in their care. (shrink)

(2013). Two aspects of propositional unity. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, Essays on the Nature of Propositions, pp. 518-533.

Prior research suggests that voluntary environmental governance mechanisms operate to enhance a firm’s environmental legitimacy as opposed to being a driver of proactive environmental performance activities. To understand how these mechanisms contribute to the firm’s environmental legitimacy, we investigate whether environmental corporate governance characteristics are associated with voluntary environmental disclosure. We examine an increasingly important attribute of a firm’s disclosure setting, namely the disclosure of greenhouse gas (GHG) information. GHG information represents proprietary non-financial information about the firm’s exposure to environmental (...) concerns and is related to the firm’s operations and future profitability. Thus, we expect governance participants would view such information as a potentially important strategic device for managing stakeholders’ demands for information concerning environmental risks. We find that the presence of an environmental committee and a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) is positively associated with the likelihood of GHG disclosure and that CSOs are associated with disclosure transparency. Further analysis reveals that the likelihood of disclosure is associated with committee size, number of committee meetings, expertise of committee members and CSO, and overlap between the environmental committee and audit committee. Only expertise of the environmental committee members and the CSO are associated with GHG disclosure transparency, while larger committees tend to be associated with lower transparency. Our results are particularly important to those with interests in evaluating the potential role that corporate governance mechanisms play in responding to stakeholder concerns about environmental risks. Directors and officers who are considering appointment to similar governance positions, may wish to consider what attributes would make such governance positions more influential. (shrink)

Archival research reports that managers often use the FIN 48 uncertain tax liability accrual to manage earnings. To assess solutions to this problem, we deconstruct the ethical and psychological reasoning that leads to FIN 48 opportunistic behavior. Hence, we employ a survey of seasoned accounting managers to assess the influences of cynicism, two measures of moral disengagement, and pressure from a CFO on the propensity to engage in FIN 48 earnings management. Specifically, we manipulate the influence of the study scenario (...) supervisory CFO as either a latent bully or a transformational leader. While the CFO bully main effect condition enhances FIN 48 earnings management, the CFO transformational leader condition interacts with less cynical accounting managers to reduce FIN 48 earnings management. We also find that both dispositional trait and situational state moral disengagement factors independently mediate the relationship between the cynicism model antecedent and FIN 48 earnings management. Collectively, study findings provide implications for both theory and practice. (shrink)

Drawing on models of the interaction order, we describe how planning is an inherently social activity. We argue that planning as a practice involves five core elements: mirroring, identifying, coordinating, timing, and surmounting. Specifically, planning depends on (1) a realization of likely responses of others, (2) a recognition of communal understandings, grounded in local cultures, (3) a commitment to collaborative engagements with allies, (4) an adjustment to temporal sequences involving the use of “in time” strategies and tactics, and (5) an (...) ability to overcome or avoid obstacles and blocking moves set by competitors and adversaries. Planning is evident in micro-, meso-, or macro-level domains. To demonstrate how planning is a social accomplishment, we analyze three distinct ethnographic sites: the world of competitive chess, dependent on the micro-interactions of two competitors; the meso-level process of homebuying, requiring the aid of real estate agents as allies; and macro-level structures in directing social movement activism in a contentious action field. Planning extends beyond cognitive achievement and is central to a sociology of the future. (shrink)

Laying foundations -- Rejecting aggression -- Safeguarding cooperation -- Enforcing law -- Rectifying injury -- Liberating society -- Situating liberation.

What did C. S. Lewis think about truth, goodness and beauty? Fifteen essays explore three major philosophical themes from the writings of Lewis--Truth, Goodness and Beauty. This volume provides a comprehensive overview of Lewis's philosophical thinking on arguments for Christianity, the character of God, theodicy, moral goodness, heaven and hell, a theory of literature and the place of the imagination.

Madison, G. B. Avant-propos.--Gadamer, H.-G. La mort comme question.--Lévinas, E. L'être et l'autre.--Dufrenne, M. L'esthétique de Paul Valéry.--Eliade, M. Orphée et l'orphisme.--Décarie, V. Vertu totale, vertu parfaite et kalokagathie dans l'Éthique à Eudème.--Strasser, S. Réflexions sur la proposition phénoménologique.--Peursen, C. van. L'existence fait-elle sens?--Edie, J. E. La pertinence actuelle de la conception husserlienne de l'idéalité du langage.--Taylor, C. Force et sens, les deux dimensions irréductibles d'une science de l'homme.--Henry, M. Phénoménologie de la conscience, phénoménologie de la vie.--Philibert, M. Marx, la (...) machine et la manufacture.--Dumas, A. Savoir objectif, croyance projective, foi interpellée.--Maqdici, A. L'ontologie kérygmatique de Paul Ricœur, approche arabe.--Kemp, P. Le rôle du mythe et de la poésie dans l'orientation sociale. (shrink)

Ennead IV.4.30-45 and IV.5 retrieves the unity in this last section of Plotinus' treatise on Problems concerning the Soul. Combining translation with commentary, Gurtler enhances both the accuracy of the translation and the recovery of Plotinus' often unsuspected originality. This is especially true for IV.5, where previous translations fail to convey the concise nature of his argument against both the Aristotelian and Platonic theories of vision. Plato and Aristotle each claim that vision depends on the light between the eye and (...) the object, but Plotinus presents evidence that this is not the case and develops a novel theory of light as a second activity that moves from source to object directly, even arguing that color is in the light itself rather than merely a quality of the object. This theory of vision, in turn, depends on the nature of sympathy developed especially in IV.4.30-45, where Plotinus shows how action at a distance is both possible and necessary for the proper unity in diversity of the sensible cosmos. (shrink)

A properly programmed artificially intelligent agent may eventually have one duty, the duty to satisfice expected welfare. We explain this claim and defend it against objections.

The increasing visibility and elevated status of musicians has become prominent in contemporary society as a consequence of technological advances and the development of both mass and specialized targeted audiences. Consequently, the actions of musicians are under greater levels of scrutiny and fans demand more from musicians than ‘just’ music. If the industry demands corporate social responsibility practices in a similar vein to how corporations promote themselves; a further question then remains regarding how the increasing prominence of such activities by (...) musicians influences music consumers and fans of individual bands and artists. The current research provides a foundation upon which to better understand the role that social responsibility plays for consumers of music. Consequently, the research has practical implications for promoting socially responsible consumption practices. The various public spaces that music consumption encompasses represent great opportunities in which ethical consumption practices can be promoted. We identify a number of factors that ultimately determine when socially responsible engagement in the music industry is supported, ignored, or even becomes the focus of consumer backlash. (shrink)

This book explores the effects of technology on the education of digital generations and the technology-mediated interaction that will prepare these generations for an unpredictable future. It discusses strategies and approaches for curriculum design, professional development, and other aspects of school organization involving technology.

This book identifies the character of human predators who violate others or themselves. The contagion of violence infects values that affect behavior. But we may call upon the intrinsic values of love, compassion, and creativity to oppose such violence. The book boldly argues for a renewal of the spiritual energy that gave rise to civilization.

This paper discusses the use of subjective health assessment in medical practice and social policy-making. The importance of recognising patients' perceptions of their health when attempting to improve patient-practitioner relationships and formulate effective health care policies is stressed. The paper describes some of the tensions that exist between objective and subjective assessments of health. It is argued that there is a need for a unifying theory to underpin the use of subjective health perceptions. Suggestions are made for the effective employment (...) of these indicators. (shrink)

Political theorists had vigorous debates about nuclear weapons in the 1980s but have been largely silent about them recently. This article seeks to reopen those discussions. It evaluates the main justifications for nuclear proliferation since 1945: arguments from consistency, nationalism, democratic legitimacy, self-defense, peaceful effects, and supreme emergency. Most of these arguments are badly flawed, as are the arguments for retaining the nuclear arsenals of many of the established nuclear powers. Instead, this article proposes a first cut at a stringent (...) standard for judging the acquisition of strategic nuclear weapons, drawing on jus ad bellum and jus in bello principles. (shrink)

Oakeshott sets out philosophical and historical views of the state. They are distinct, and their distinctiveness harmonizes with his notion of the exclusivity of philosophical and historical perspectives. The modal distinctness of philosophy, history, and practice is established in Experience and Its Modes and is then rehearsed in subsequent publications, notably in essays in Rationalism and Politics. History is a way of seeing the past that is at odds with practical thought and philosophy. It is the sign of ideology, and (...) its misperceptions of the relations between philosophy and practice that ideologists such as Lenin and Thatcher invoke abstractions of communism and the market to frame practical political decision-making. However, in considering art in the essay “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind,” Oakeshott imagines art to be independent of other activities and yet to maintain a conversational relationship between the modes of experience. What is meant by a conversation? For Oakeshott, a conversation does not preclude the independence of modes of experience from one another. The closeness between philosophy, practice, and history is also assumed and yet underplayed by the argument of On Human Conduct, which imagines theory to be separate from history and practice. In this paper, it is argued that the connections between practical, historical, and philosophical modes of understanding the state in Oakeshott’s work are closer than is suggested by the metaphor of conversation and at odds with the separation that is maintained in Experience and its Modes. (shrink)

My central goal in this paper is to interpret what Quine says in his Kant lectures about the norms of epistemology and the doctrinal and conceptual tasks of epistemology—the tasks, respectively, of constructing good theories and of clarifying meanings—in light of what he says about these topics in several of his earlier and later works. I argue that despite one puzzling passage in the Kant lectures that misleadingly suggests otherwise, the norms of Quine’s epistemology are exclusively doctrinal, not conceptual.

Did Quine respond to the Kant-like question of what makes objectivity possible? And if so, what was his answer? I think Quine did have an answer, which is in fact a central theme in his philosophy. For his epistemology was not concerned with the question whether we have knowledge of the external world. His philosophy takes for granted that physics provides the most fundamental account of reality that we have. And like many positivists including Carnap, he takes that sort of (...) question to have a fundamentally changed and newly tractable character. His more general epistemological question is what is actually involved in a human subject coming to have knowledge of the objective world, when limited to the deliverances of his or her own senses. Most of the story is well-known, but an essential link was not fully explicit until 1990s: the doctrine of Pre-Established Harmony. (shrink)

If humans are sanctified by a triune God, part of the success of spiritual formation depends on understanding how one’s agency depends upon the Trinity. Some sanctifying actions require causal notions like “obedience,” “yielding,” “participation,” and “cooperation.” So, how is a Christian going to understand them? The purpose of this paper, then, is twofold: develop a model of agency that provides an adequate account of understanding how one’s agency depends upon the Trinity; and explain how this model can increase the (...) reliability of one’s perceptual capacities to perceive one’s agency cooperating with the Trinity in acts of sanctification. (shrink)

Ethics consultation is a commonly applied mechanism to address clinical ethical dilemmas. However, there is little information on the viewpoints of health care providers towards the relevance of ethics committees and appropriate application of ethics consultation in clinical practice. We sought to use qualitative methodology to evaluate free-text responses to a case-based survey to identify thematically the views of health care professionals towards the role of ethics committees in resolving clinical ethical dilemmas. Using an iterative and reflexive model we identified (...) themes that health care providers support a role for ethics committees and hospitals in resolving clinical ethical dilemmas, that the role should be one of mediation, rather than prescription, but that ultimately legal exposure was dispositive compared to ethical theory. The identified theme of legal fears suggests that the mediation role of ethics committees is viewed by health care professionals primarily as a practical means to avoid more worrisome medico-legal conflict. (shrink)

Introduction: The humanities enrich and transform the practice of medicine. What remains to be seen, however, is how best to integrate humanities into the medical curriculum to optimize both educational and patient-related outcomes. The present study considers the structure of an innovative student-driven humanities curriculum and seeks to understand its strengths and limitations, as well as make recommendations for improvement. Methods: The Penn State College of Medicine, University Park Regional Campus uses an inquiry-based approach to education, whereby students are responsible (...) for creating learning objectives in four core pillars of exploration: Foundational Science, Clinical Science, Health Systems Science, and Health Humanities. This study explores student-derived humanities learning objectives (HLO) across four years of the curriculum. Results: 420 HLOs met criteria for analysis and were coded as instrumental (developing direct clinical skill), non-instrumental (non-skill based), or both. Of these, 125 (30%) were instrumental, 239 (57%) were non-instrumental, and 56 (13%) were coded as both. Most instrumental HLO centered around communication skills. Non-instrumental HLO most commonly focused on bearing witness and critiquing a particular experience within a social and/or political context. Conclusions: Findings from this study contribute to the development of a humanities curriculum in a student-directed learning program. Non-instrumental HLO lacked a theoretical framework to guide student’s investigations to a deeper level of analysis. Student-directed learning offers many strengths, but can be enhanced through external direction from humanities trained faculty, particularly given that many medical students have a limited humanities background. (shrink)