This paper examines voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting as a form of moral discourse. It explores how alternative stakeholder perspectives lead to differing perceptions of the process and content of responsible reporting. We contrast traditional stakeholder theory, which views stakeholders as external parties having a social contract with corporations, with an emerging perspective, which views interaction among corporations and constituents as relational in nature. This moves the stakeholder from an external entity to one that is integral to corporate activity. (...) We explore how these alternative stakeholder perspectives give rise to different normative demands for stakeholder engagement, managerial processes, and communication. We discuss models of CSR reporting and accountability: EMAS, the ISO 14000 series, SA8000, AA1000, the Global Reporting Initiative, and the Copenhagen Charter. We explore how these models relate to the stakeholder philosophies and find that they are largely consistent with the traditional atomistic view but fall far short of the demands for moral engagement prescribed by a relational stakeholder perspective. Adopting a relational view requires stakeholder engagement not only in prescribing reporting requirements, but also in discourse relating to core aspects of the corporation such as mission, values, and management systems. Habermas’ theory of communicative action provides guidelines for engaging stakeholders in this moral discourse. (shrink)

BackgroundThere is increasing need for peer reviewers as the scientific literature grows. Formal education in biostatistics and research methodology during residency training is lacking. In this pilot study, we addressed these issues by evaluating a novel method of teaching residents about biostatistics and research methodology using peer review of standardized manuscripts. We hypothesized that mentored peer review would improve resident knowledge and perception of these concepts more than non-mentored peer review, while improving review quality.MethodsA partially blinded, randomized, controlled multi-center study (...) was performed. Seventy-eight neurology residents from nine US neurology programs were randomized to receive mentoring from a local faculty member or not. Within a year, residents reviewed a baseline manuscript and four subsequent manuscripts, all with introduced errors designed to teach fundamental review concepts. In the mentored group, mentors discussed completed reviews with residents. Primary outcome measure was change in knowledge score between pre- and post-tests, measuring epidemiology and biostatistics knowledge. Secondary outcome measures included level of confidence in the use and interpretation of statistical concepts before and after intervention, and RQI score for baseline and final manuscripts.ResultsSixty-four residents (82%) completed initial review with gradual decline in completion on subsequent reviews. Change in primary outcome, the difference between pre- and post-test knowledge scores, did not differ between mentored (−8.5%) and non-mentored (−13.9%) residents (p = 0.48). Significant differences in secondary outcomes (using 5-point Likert scale, 5 = strongly agree) included mentored residents reporting enhanced understanding of research methodology (3.69 vs 2.61; p = 0.001), understanding of manuscripts (3.73 vs 2.87; p = 0.006), and application of study results to clinical practice (3.65 vs 2.78; p = 0.005) compared to non-mentored residents. There was no difference between groups in level of interest in peer review (3.00 vs 3.09; p = 0.72) or the quality of manuscript review assessed by the Review Quality Instrument (RQI) (3.25 vs 3.06; p = 0.50).ConclusionsWe used mentored peer review of standardized manuscripts to teach biostatistics and research methodology and introduce the peer review process to residents. Though knowledge level did not change, mentored residents had enhanced perception in their abilities to understand research methodology and manuscripts and apply study results to clinical practice. (shrink)

In this paper we shall introduce a simple temporal logic suitable for reasoning about the temporal aspects of parallel universes, parallel processes, distributed systems, or multiple agents. We will use a variant of the mosaic method to prove decidability of this logic. We also show that the logic does not have the finite model property. This shows that the mosaic method is sometimes a stronger way of establishing decidability.

Over the past 50 years, academic-industrial collaborations and technology transfer have played an increasingly prominent role in the biomedical sciences. These relationships can speed the delivery of innovative drugs and medical technologies to clinical practice, creating important public health benefits as well as income for universities and their faculty. At the same time, they raise ethical concerns, particularly when research involves human subjects in clinical trials. Lapses in oversight of industry sponsored clinical trials at universities, and especially patient deaths in (...) a number of trials, have brought these issues into the public spotlight and have led the federal government to intensify its oversight of clinical research. The leadership of Harvard Medical School convened a group of leaders in academic medicine to formulate guidelines on individual financial conflicts of interest. They and other groups are working to formulate a national consensus on this issue. (shrink)

In this chapter, I revisit the question of the philosophical significance of the Great War upon the trajectory of philosophy in the twentieth century. While accounts of this are very rare in philosophy, and this is itself symptomatic, those that are given are also strangely implausible. They usually assert one of two things: that the War had little or no philosophical significance because most of the major developments had already begun, or—at the opposite extreme—they maintain that nothing was ever the (...) same in philosophy (as elsewhere). On the latter view, the creation of the so-called analytic-continental ‘divide’ is but one notable philosophical consequence of the Great War. I want here to steer a middle-way between these positions, both having a grain of truth but over-playing their respective hands. (shrink)

Professionalisation of Journalism has been a subject under global scrutiny since the nineteenth century. Contemporary studies show how journalism profession grapples with the implementation of standard journalism education and practices across the globe. The author discovered that the development of journalism has remarkable link with the advent of Christianity, however, an apparent decline of ethical values in higher education and professional practices abound thereby revealing the type of quality of education provided and the substandard nature of journalistic Professionalisation. Empirical research (...) conducted in this regard geared towards assessing the socio-ethical relevance of Professionalisation as beneficial to democratic development, and the challenges journalists encounter that hinder the implementation of professional ethics and cultural values as a contribution to human dignity, rights, justice, solidarity and the common good. To critically examine these phenomena, this research study is anchored of scientific materials. It adopted the see-judge-act (A Theological methodology approach used in appraising socio-ethical situations) as well as qualitative and quantitative methods. The researcher conducted thirteen semi-standardised interviews as well as analysed 200 data samples (twenty-three questions) with Mayring model and (SPSS) was used to evaluate the quantitative data. The research results showed the thirteen different interview partners unanimously consented that journalism in Nigeria must be professionalised and there is need to integrate Christian social ethics and culture driven values into the training curriculum if journalists are to regain their credibility and integrity. The tested hypotheses showed statistical significance (p. (shrink)

General extenders are phrases like 'or something', 'and everything', 'and things ', 'and stuff ', and 'and so on'. Although they are an everyday feature of spoken language, are crucial in successful interpersonal communication, and have multiple functions in discourse, they have so far gone virtually unnoticed in linguistics. This pioneering work provides a comprehensive description of this new linguistic category. It offers new insights into ongoing changes in contemporary English, the effect of grammaticalization, novel uses as associative plural markers (...) and indicators of intertextuality, and the metapragmatic role of extenders in interaction. The forms and functions of general extenders are presented clearly and accessibly, enabling students to understand a number of different frameworks of analysis in discourse-pragmatic studies. From an applied perspective, the book presents a description of translation equivalents, an analysis of second language variation, and practical exercises for teaching second language learners of English. (shrink)

"The book as a whole seeks to reinvigorate an academic discipline (philosophy of religion) which has fallen on hard times, and to do so by building a bridge between philosophy and empirical-historical studies of religion. The topic is both significant and timely. Too long the empiricists have been inadequately sophisticated philosophically and too long the philosophers have ignored historical data both in its breadth and depth. In not only calling for bridges between these disciplines, but actually building some, the work (...) makes a significant contribution to both." -- Alan Miller "This book is useful because it provides some insights both into the ways scholars think about various aspects of religious behavior, and also information about important features of such behavior. Both myth and philosophy are topics of great significance, and have been discussed by many philosophers and historians of religions and some anthropologists. An interesting set of questions about the nature of religion, and nature of philosophy and their relationships (and also about the nature of myth and its relationship to philosophy) is emerging at the forefront of academic discussions in departments of religion, departments of philosophy, and departments of anthropology. It contains some well-written and conceptually interesting essays." -- E. Thomas Lawson. (shrink)

Gender patterns in speech styles provide us with models of both the dominant confrontational style (male) and the affiliative nurturant style (female). In this paper, I argue that dominant confrontational styles are seriously problematic, in speech as well as in behaviour generally, whereas affiliative nurturant styles offer us a model which can be generalized without contradiction. I distinguish confrontation from competition and address briefly how our classrooms might be used to teach affiliative nurturant styles of talking and living.

Two decades of research using repeated false statements and underhanded information have shown that people can easily be made to believe that they have seen or experienced something they never did. In this paper, we discuss the possibility that the mental health professional and client may unknowingly collaborate to create a client′s false memory of childhood sexual abuse. Both therapist and client bring beliefs into therapy, and the confirmation bias shows that people discover what they already believe to be true. (...) What do people believe about memory? We asked 115 students for their reactions to various statements about how memory works; results showed widespread belief in the repression mechanism. A principal components analysis revealed that three larger beliefs explained 61% of the variance in the more specific beliefs: possible sources of memory distortions, memory for traumatic events, and the potential recoverability of memories. Finally, we discuss the ambiguity inherent in the term repression, as well as the generalizability of misinformation research to the repressed and recovered memories. (shrink)

We give a sound and complete axiomatization for the full computation tree logic, CTL*, of R-generable models. This solves a long standing open problem in branching time temporal logic.

In this wide-ranging and thought-provoking study, Maryanne Cline Horowitz explores the image and idea of the human mind as a garden: under the proper educational cultivation, the mind may nourish seeds of virtue and knowledge into the full flowering of human wisdom. This copiously illustrated investigation begins by examining the intellectual world of the Stoics, who originated the phrases "seeds of virtue" and "seeds of knowledge." Tracing the interrelated history of the Stoic cluster of epistemological images for natural law within (...) humanity--reason, common notions, sparks, and seeds--Horowitz presents the distinctive versions within the competing movements of Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity, Augustinian and Thomist theologies, Christian mysticism and Kabbalah, and Erasmian Catholicism and the Lutheran Reformation. She demonstrates how the Ciceronian and Senecan analogies between horticulture and culture--basic to Italian Renaissance humanists, artists, and neo- Platonists--influence the emergence of emblems and essays among participants in the Northern Renaissance neo-Stoic movement. The Stoic metaphor is still visible today in ecumenical movements that use vegetative language to encourage the growth of shared values and to promote civic virtues: organizations disseminate information on nipping bad habits in the bud and on turning a new leaf. The author's evidence of illustrated pages from medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment texts will stimulate contemporary readers to evaluate her discovery of "the premodern scientific paradigm that the mind develops like a plant.". (shrink)

This paper explores the idea that Deleuze’s oeuvre is best understood as a philosophy of the wound, synonymous with a philosophy of the event. Although this wound/scar typology may appear to be a metaphorical conceit, the motif of the wound recurs frequently and perhaps even symptomatically in many of Deleuze’s texts, particularly where he is attempting to delineate some of the most important differences (transcendental, temporal, and ethical) between himself and his phenomenological predecessors. I raise some some potential problems for (...) this trajectory, most of which revolve around Deleuze's use of transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Reflective essay focusing on both a discussion of personal identity issues with ninth grade students and the(delayed) impact that a student contribution can have on philosophy teachers.

Reflective essay focusing on both a discussion of personal identity issues with ninth grade students and the(delayed) impact that a student contribution can have on philosophy teachers.

Reflective essay focusing on both a discussion of personal identity issues with ninth grade students and the(delayed) impact that a student contribution can have on philosophy teachers.

Although their work in the philosophy of biology is not well known, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Ruyer all offer interesting and heterodox accounts of the life and environmental sciences and the organism in particular. In this chapter, we discuss their respective views, with a focus on their shared criticisms of Neo- Darwinism and the way this tradition grasped the structural coupling between organism and environment. We also outline some significant differences between each of them concerning how to conceive of that holistic (...) relation and the extent of “captivation” of the animal to its environment. Given that there are indications that the twenty-first century might be post-genomic/epigenetic, we argue that it is worth revisiting these neglected organicist trajectories that sought to navigate between mechanism and vitalism. (shrink)

On the grounds of a former Ottoman palace overlooking the Bosphorus, member nations of the European Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference met in the first-ever O.I.C.-E.U. Joint Forum, initiated by Turkey in the aftermath of Sept. 11 "to promote understanding and harmony among civilizations." Some 70 nations took part, including Iran and Iraq, two points on Washington's "axis of evil." As Turkish officials led their guests in discussing tolerance, appreciation of cultural diversity and the understanding of different (...) perceptions and values, the nearby State Security Court was hearing the latest freedom-of-expression cases on its docket. (shrink)

Two perspectives from which memories can be retrieved have been distinguished: field resembles the view from the first-person vantage point of original experience, whereas observer resembles the view from the third-person vantage point of a spectator. There is evidence that the incidences of the two types of perspective differ between at least two different cultural groups. It is hypothesised here that this is a special case of a more general relation between memory perspective and cultural individualism, such that field and (...) observer perspectives are more prevalent among people from, respectively, relatively individualist and relatively collectivist societies. Memory perspectives adopted by participants from a range of different countries were recorded, and were found to vary in the predicted manner. Regression analysis showed that the potential effects of three other cultural variables – uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and, to a lesser extent, power distance – were eclipsed by the influence of individualism, and the implications are discussed. (shrink)

The monk Rodulfus Glaber is best known for his Five Books of Histories, a major source for events in the first half of the eleventh century, and valuable above all for revealing the mental furniture of an eleventh-century monk - for his account of the millennium, of relics genuine and false, of church-building, and visions of saints and demons. This edition, the first since 1866, presents the only critical text of the Histories, accompanied by a complete translation and a full (...) historical commentary. Glaber also wrote a Life of his mentor, St William of Dijon, the renowned monastic reformer. The Life is reprinted after the Histories, again with translation and notes. The evidence for Glaber's life, and the value of his work are discussed in a Historical Introduction. (shrink)

Reynold Jones; An Aspect of Moral Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 63–71, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-97.

Reynold Jones; A Reply to Kieran Egan, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 195–198, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1.

This paper argues that epistemic errors rooted in group- or identity- based biases, especially those pertaining to disability, are undertheorized in the literature on medical error. After sketching dominant taxonomies of medical error, we turn to the field of social epistemology to understand the role that epistemic schemas play in contributing to medical errors that disproportionately affect patients from marginalized social groups. We examine the effects of this unequal distribution through a detailed case study of ableism. There are four primary (...) mechanisms through which the epistemic schema of ableism distorts communication between nondisabled physicians and disabled patients: testimonial injustice, epistemic overconfidence, epistemic erasure, and epistemic derailing. Measures against epistemic injustices in general and against schema-based medical errors in particular are ultimately issues of justice that must be better addressed at all levels of health care practice. (shrink)