This study investigates whether local gambling norms are associated with audit pricing. Using a religion-based measure of local social gambling norms, we find strong evidence that public firms located in U.S. counties with more liberal gambling norms exhibit higher levels of audit fees. This result is consistent with our view that, as an important external risk factor, clients’ local gambling norms influence audit pricing decisions. Our findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests, including non-religion based measures of liberal (...) gambling norms and a natural experiment. (shrink)

Individuals vary in the way they navigate through space. Some take novel shortcuts, while others rely on known routes to find their way around. We wondered how and why there is so much variation in the population. To address this, we first compared the trajectories of 368 human subjects navigating a virtual maze with simulated trajectories. The simulated trajectories were generated by strategy-based path planning algorithms from robotics. Based on the similarities between human trajectories and different strategy-based simulated trajectories, we (...) found that there is a variation in the type of strategy individuals apply to navigate space, as well as variation within individuals on a trial-by-trial basis. Moreover, we observed variation within a trial when subjects occasionally switched the navigation strategies halfway through a trajectory. In these cases, subjects started with a route strategy, in which they followed a familiar path, and then switched to a survey strategy, in which they took shortcuts by considering the layout of the environment. Then we simulated a second set of trajectories using five different but comparable artificial maps. These trajectories produced the similar pattern of strategy variation within and between trials. Furthermore, we varied the relative cost, that is, the assumed mental effort or required timesteps to choose a learned route over alternative paths. When the learned route was relatively costly, the simulated agents tended to take shortcuts. Conversely, when the learned route was less costly, the simulated agents showed preference toward a route strategy. We suggest that cost or assumed mental effort may be the reason why in previous studies, subjects used survey knowledge when instructed to take the shortest path. We suggest that this variation we observe in humans may be beneficial for robotic swarms or collections of autonomous agents during information gathering. (shrink)

Individuals vary in the way they navigate through space. Some take novel shortcuts, while others rely on known routes to find their way around. We wondered how and why there is so much variation in the population. To address this, we first compared the trajectories of 368 human subjects navigating a virtual maze with simulated trajectories. The simulated trajectories were generated by strategy-based path planning algorithms from robotics. Based on the similarities between human trajectories and different strategy-based simulated trajectories, we (...) found that there is a variation in the type of strategy individuals apply to navigate space, as well as variation within individuals on a trial-by-trial basis. Moreover, we observed variation within a trial when subjects occasionally switched the navigation strategies halfway through a trajectory. In these cases, subjects started with a route strategy, in which they followed a familiar path, and then switched to a survey strategy, in which they took shortcuts by considering the layout of the environment. Then we simulated a second set of trajectories using five different but comparable artificial maps. These trajectories produced the similar pattern of strategy variation within and between trials. Furthermore, we varied the relative cost, that is, the assumed mental effort or required timesteps to choose a learned route over alternative paths. When the learned route was relatively costly, the simulated agents tended to take shortcuts. Conversely, when the learned route was less costly, the simulated agents showed preference toward a route strategy. We suggest that cost or assumed mental effort may be the reason why in previous studies, subjects used survey knowledge when instructed to take the shortest path. We suggest that this variation we observe in humans may be beneficial for robotic swarms or collections of autonomous agents during information gathering. (shrink)

The sixth and most recently published of the seven Heidegger manuscripts from his literary remains, The Event , is itself something of an event. If the Beiträge zur Philosophie was to set the stage for what has been received as an even more experimental Heidegger, then The Event in many ways might look back on that experimentation as yesterday’s news. The Event seems to begin where the Beiträge ended, as if there was no longer the need to justify its sentences (...) by means of an appeal to the historical tradition; in fact, such an appeal goes further towards confirming that tradition and its corresponding metaphysics than it does towards problematizing it. This is not to say that The Event progresses as if the historical tradition were no longer unfolding, but that it is much less concerned with trying to make sense of its own unfolding from out of some vaguely universal understanding of that tradition. In fact, while the Beiträge unceasingly attempted to make .. (shrink)

Exploring the concepts of ethics, morality, and decision-making for the law enforcement community, Decision Point: Real-Life Ethical Dilemmas in Law Enforcement offers an inside look at the difficult challenges officers confront every day as they face ethical decisions that could drastically alter the course of their careers. Through a series of real-life vignettes, the book reviews specific scenarios, the actual decisions that were made, and the consequences and implications of these decisions. Focusing on the critical thinking needed for making appropriate (...) decisions, it retrospectively discusses considerations that were or should have been evaluated at the time. An engaging text ideal for classroom use, the book offers discussion questions at the end of each chapter that can be used as assignments, group breakout discussions, or professor-facilitated discussions. (shrink)

This article contrasts St. Thomas More's theoretical work on the role of faith and history in biblical exegesis with that of Fr. Richard Simon. I argue that, although Simon's work appears to be a critique of his more skeptical contemporaries like Hobbes and Spinoza, in reality he is carrying their work forward. I argue that More's union of faith and reason, theology and history, is more promising than Simon's for Catholic theological biblical exegesis.

Time underlies many interesting human behaviors. Thus, the question of how to represent time in connectionist models is very important. One approach is to represent time implicitly by its effects on processing rather than explicitly (as in a spatial representation). The current report develops a proposal along these lines first described by Jordan (1986) which involves the use of recurrent links in order to provide networks with a dynamic memory. In this approach, hidden unit patterns are fed back to themselves: (...) the internal representations which develop thus reflect task demands in the context of prior internal states. A set of simulations is reported which range from relatively simple problems (temporal version of XOR) to discovering syntactic/semantic features for words. The networks are able to learn interesting internal representations which incorporate task demands with memory demands: indeed, in this approach the notion of memory is inextricably bound up with task processing. These representations reveal a rich structure, which allows them to be highly context‐dependent, while also expressing generalizations across classes of items. These representations suggest a method for representing lexical categories and the type/token distinction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI ed. by John C. CavadiniJeffrey L. MorrowExplorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI. Edited by John C. Cavadini. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. viii + 318. $30.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-268-02309-6.Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is arguably the greatest theologian to ascend to the chair of St. Peter in centuries. His theological output even prior to becoming pope (...) is staggering. It is thus fitting that an edited volume examine his theological oeuvre; there is a need for many more such volumes. The essays collected in this book were originally presented at a conference on the theology of Pope Benedict at the University of Notre Dame. Each contribution brings something insightful and unique to the volume. The book is divided into three sections: “The Dynamic of Advent,” encompassing chapters 2–5; “Caritas in Veritate,” encompassing chapters 6–7; and “God is Love,” encompassing the remaining chapters 8–11. The initial chapter-length introduction and the first chapter fall outside of this division because in many ways they set the stage for the entire volume.John Cavadini’s introduction (1–20) could serve as a useful overview of the theological work of Pope Benedict. Cavadini provides a preview of each chapter but also underscores the significance of Benedict’s theological work. He emphasizes how “one of Benedict’s major achievements is the demonstration of Augustine’s original insight into the unity of the theological tasks of understanding and of engendering understanding” (3).Cyril O’Regan’s very fine essay, “Benedict the Augustinian” (21–60), examines the Augustinian nature of Benedict’s theology. O’Regan maintains, “throughout his career Benedict not only turns again and again to Augustine as his theological model, but also... in Benedict’s self-understanding[,] the basic figuration of his theology is Augustinian” (22). This Augustinian texture to Benedict’s theology involves, among other things, his “real familiarity with and admiration” for “the classic” works of Augustine, his use of Augustine’s “theological style,” his use of shared themes, and the manner in which he consciously “articulates substantive theological positions” typical of Augustine. Moreover, O’Regan points to “Benedict’s sense that he is living in a time of crisis and senescence similar to that of Augustine” (21–22). Some of the similarities O’Regan observes in the theological work of Augustine and Benedict pertain to eschatology, the relationship between faith and reason, biblical interpretation, culture, the role of the liturgy, and the centrality of prayer. O’Regan’s essay is undoubtedly the best piece I have read on the importance of Augustine for Benedict.The thesis of Peter Casarella’s “Culture and Conscience in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI” (63–86) is that for Benedict, “the witness to truth is the key to seeing how culture and conscience are necessarily intertwined” (64). Casarella initiates his investigation with the pope’s critique of relativism. The first major section examines what he terms Benedict’s “theology of culture.” For Benedict, this has a moral dimension, and thus [End Page 493] Caserella spends the entire second portion of his essay looking at conscience and its formation in the context of culture. This is a very helpful essay that makes an important contribution to Benedict’s thought as it relates to moral theology.The late Fr. Edward Oakes’s contribution, “Resolving the Relativity Paradox: Pope Benedict XVI and the Challenge of Christological Relativism” (87–113), explores Benedict’s problem with relativism, but homes in on relativism in the context of Christology. Oakes argues, “the challenge of relativism cannot be met unless it is done first and foremost in Christological terms” (93), and he thinks Benedict does precisely this. Oakes’s overview of Ernst Troeltsch’s discussion of historical criticism as corrosive to Christology is enlightening:what most undermines Christocentrism is the historical-critical method, not so much because of the results arising from that method as from its very use.... Historical criticism... is marked by three key methodological principles: (1) the principle of criticism, that no historical document... can be taken on its own terms as automatically reliable but must... (shrink)

Although for many years a sharp distinction has been made in language research between rules and words—with primary interest on rules—this distinction is now blurred in many theories. If anything, the focus of attention has shifted in recent years in favor of words. Results from many different areas of language research suggest that the lexicon is representationally rich, that it is the source of much productive behavior, and that lexically specific information plays a critical and early role in the interpretation (...) of grammatical structure. But how much information can or should be placed in the lexicon? This is the question I address here. I review a set of studies whose results indicate that event knowledge plays a significant role in early stages of sentence processing and structural analysis. This poses a conundrum for traditional views of the lexicon. Either the lexicon must be expanded to include factors that do not plausibly seem to belong there; or else virtually all information about word meaning is removed, leaving the lexicon impoverished. I suggest a third alternative, which provides a way to account for lexical knowledge without a mental lexicon. (shrink)

Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion Jeffrey L. Kosky Reveals the interplay of phenomenology and religion in Levinas’s thought. "Kosky examines Levinas’s thought from the perspective of the philosophy of religion and he does so in a way that is attentive to the philosophical nuances of Levinas’s argument.... an insightful, well written, and carefully documented study... that uniquely illuminates Levinas’s work." —John D. Caputo For readers who suspect there is no place for religion and morality in postmodern philosophy, (...) class='Hi'>Jeffrey L. Kosky suggests otherwise in this skillful interpretation of the ethical and religious dimensions of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought. Placing Levinas in relation to Hegel and Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger, Derrida and Marion, Kosky develops religious themes found in Levinas’s work and offers a way to think and speak about ethics and morality within the horizons of contemporary philosophy of religion. Kosky embraces the entire scope of Levinas’s writings, from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being, contrasting Levinas’s early religious and moral thought with that of his later works while exploring the nature of phenomenological reduction, the relation of religion and philosophy, the question of whether Levinas can be considered a Jewish thinker, and the religious and theological import of Levinas’s phenomenology. Kosky stresses that Levinas is first and foremost a phenomenologist and that the relationship between religion and philosophy in his ethics should cast doubt on the assumption that a natural or inevitable link exists between deconstruction and atheism. Jeffrey L. Kosky is translator of On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought by Jean-Luc Marion. He has taught at Williams College. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor May 2001 272 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, bibl., index, append. cloth 0-253-33925-1 $39.95 s / £30.50. (shrink)

La pensée de Lévinas, du début jusqu’à la fin, est animée par le souci de libérer le moi du « mal de l’être » – c’est-à-dire, de l’expérience de l’être anonyme et irrémissible, sans fin ni commencement, que Lévinas nomme il y a. Dans les premiers ouvrages , l’autofondation du sujet répond à ce souci, mais cette tentative de libération échoue en tant qu’elle condamne le sujet à la présence toujours présente de lui-même et à sa persévérance dans l’effort d’être. (...) La notion de substitution que développera pleinement Autrement qu’être réussit là où la tentative des premiers ouvrages a échoué. La substitution dans la responsabilité libère la subjectivité mais, selon un paradoxe essentiel, la libère en la rendant otage de l’autre. Si la substitution dans la responsabilité est en effet l’événement de la subjectivation, comme le soutient Lévinas, alors il n’y a pas d’éthique sans libération et pas de libération sans éthique.Levinas’ thought, form start to finish, was animated by a concern for liberation of the self form the « evil of Being » – that is, form the experience of anonymous, irremissible Being without start or finish, which Levins names there is. In the early works , the autofoundation of the subject responds to this concern, but this attempt at liberation falls short as it condemns the subject to the ever present presence of itself and its perseverance in the effort of existing. The notion of substituion, developed most fully in Autrement qu’être, then succeeds xhere the aerlier effort failed. Substitution in responsibility liberates subjectivity, but, according to an essential paradox, liberates it as hostage of the other. If substitution in responsibility is indeed the event of subjectification, as Levinas argues, then there is no ethics without liberation, and no liberation without ethics. (shrink)

Thomas More presents us with a wonderful example of martyrological exegesis where his exegetical work was intended to inspire his readers to live the virtues, to follow Christ, and to provide consolation amidst tribulation. Such exegesis aimed to aid the reader to live the martyrdom required in ordinary life and beyond that, if necessary, with mental anguish, physical torture, and even death on behalf of Christ. Before examining More's work, I first situate this discussion within the broader conversation concerning modern (...) biblical interpretation- in particular the notion of senses of Scripture - therein explaining how I shall be using terms like mystagogy and martyrdom in this article. I shall then examine More's spiritual exegesis of Jesus' passion narratives, paying particular attention to the agony in the garden. I shall conclude with a look at the saint's life, which provides a background for his interpretation of Scripture. (shrink)

The phenomenological project of Jean-Luc Marion’s Being Given (namely, to free phenomenological possibility to the unconditional self-giving of all phenomena) should be distinguished from the theological project of his God without Being (to think God unconditionally and absolutely). In freeing phenomenological possibility to the self-giving of all phenomena (on the model of the saturated phenomenon), and in proposing a new figure of the subject who receives phenomena (the gifted), Marion’s phenomenology provides the conceptual means for a philosophy of religion that (...) admits the phenomenonality of unconditional revelation. And yet, thereremain striking parallels between the unconditional, self-giving phenomenon as it is described in the phenomenology of Being Given and the unconditional, self-giving God of the theological God without Being. This essay concludes by offering a framework for interpreting these parallels without claiming that the saturated phenomenon transforms phenomenology into theology and without claiming that phenomenological givenness limits revelation to its philosophical possibility. (shrink)

With the 1901 publication of his Les Mythes babyloniens et les premiers chapitres de la Genèse, the French Catholic scholar Alfred Loisy examined carefully parallels between Babylonian literature and the Book of Genesis. In German scholarship, this had been a growing fascination since at least the 1895 publication of Hermann Gunkel’s Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit. Loisy’s use of the concept of “Myth” provides an important window into the appropriation of German scholarship on religion and the Bible into (...) the French scholarly world. Through Loisy’s work, what had been primarily a German Protestant academic discussion became one of the matchsticks that ignited what would become known as the Roman Catholic Modernist Crisis. This present article situates Loisy’s appropriation of “Myth” from the German scholarship he mastered within the proximate cultural, historical, and religious context that became Roman Catholic Modernism. (shrink)

Ten years after the appearance of Günter Blamberger’s award-winning Heinrich von Kleist. Biographie in the original German, the English translation by Sebastian Goth and Kelly Kawar appeared in 202...

When corporations are accused of unethical behaviour by external actors, executives from those organizations are usually compelled to offer communicative responses to defend their corporate image. To demonstrate the effect that corporate executives'' communicative responses have on third parties'' perception of corporate image, we present the Corporate Communicative Response Model in this paper. Of the five potential communicative responses contained in this model (no response, denial, excuse, justification, and concession), results from our empirical test demonstrate that a concession is the (...) most effective and robust communicative option. (shrink)

Thomas More presents us with a wonderful example of martyrological exegesis where his exegetical work was intended to inspire his readers to live the virtues, to follow Christ, and to provide consolation amidst tribulation. Such exegesis aimed to aid the reader to live the martyrdom required in ordinary life and beyond that, if necessary, with mental anguish, physical torture, and even death on behalf of Christ. Before examining More's work, I first situate this discussion within the broader conversation concerning modern (...) biblical interpretation- in particular the notion of senses of Scripture - therein explaining how I shall be using terms like mystagogy and martyrdom in this article. I shall then examine More's spiritual exegesis of Jesus' passion narratives, paying particular attention to the agony in the garden. I shall conclude with a look at the saint's life, which provides a background for his interpretation of Scripture. (shrink)

Does Descartes belong to metaphysics? What do we mean when we say "metaphysics"? These questions form the point of departure for Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking study of Cartesian thought. Analyses of Descartes' notion of the _ego_ and his idea of God show that if Descartes represents the fullest example of metaphysics, he no less transgresses its limits. Writing as philosopher and historian of philosophy, Marion uses Heidegger's concept of metaphysics to interpret the Cartesian corpus—an interpretation strangely omitted from Heidegger's own history (...) of philosophy. This interpretation complicates and deepens the Heideggerian concept of metaphysics, a concept that has dominated twentieth-century philosophy. Examinations of Descartes' predecessors and his successors clarify the meaning of the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. Expertly translated by Jeffrey Kosky, this work will appeal to historians of philosophy, students of religion, and anyone interested in the genealogy of contemporary thought and its contradictions. (shrink)

We take our bearings from Francesco Negri — Although many persons attribute the origin of letter writing to various causes, I however believe that one to be closer to the truth that we have received, handed down by memory, from the ancient stories of Turpilius: namely, that the letter was invented for no other purpose than that we should make absent friends once more present [absentes amicos presentes redderemus] and that by regarding [intuentes] their letters we mightfor a time restore (...) the friendship interrupted by intervals of time and space; for since friendship is accustomed to making its foundation in daily companionship,when this thing is missing it seems indeed to weaken not a little.and hear in this passage the resonance of Aristotle:Is it then the same way with friends as with lovers, for whom seeing [to horon] the beloved is their greatest contentment, and the thing they choose over the other senses, since it is especially through seeing that love is present and comes to be present, so that for friends, too, living together [suzèn] is the most choiceworthy thing? For friendship is a sharing in common [koinònia]. (EN 1171b29–33)The audible connection with Aristotle is faint. Negri’s work is securely placed against the background of the increasing formalization of the art of letter writing in the Middle Ages and its Renaissance development, in which he figured prominently. The genealogy that he proposes, whose forebear is an all but forgotten Roman playwright, belongs to an account of literary tradition in which Cicero is the exemplary figure. Nonetheless, it is in St. Jerome that he finds the likely source of his attribution. (shrink)