This paper discusses the introduction of a short ethics component into a first-year undergraduate accounting information systems course at a UK university. The influence of this ethics component on students’ ethical perceptions—where ethical perceptions are represented by the extent to which students’ conclusions regarding unethical actions coincide with those of experts in the field—is then assessed using computer-based scenarios to represent seven categories of ethicalnorms. The ethical perceptions in each of the scenarios are then statistically compared between two groups of (...) students, namely those who have studied the ethics component and those who have not. Results indicate no significant difference in ethical perceptions between the two groups across all of the ethical norms. Possible explanations for this result are discussed and implications for future ethics teaching are considered. (shrink)

This paper discusses the introduction of a short ethics component into a first-year undergraduate accounting information systems course at a UK university. The influence of this ethics component on students’ ethical perceptions—where ethical perceptions are represented by the extent to which students’ conclusions regarding unethical actions coincide with those of experts in the field—is then assessed using computer-based scenarios to represent seven categories of ethicalnorms. The ethical perceptions in each of the scenarios are then statistically compared between two groups of (...) students, namely those who have studied the ethics component and those who have not. Results indicate no significant difference in ethical perceptions between the two groups across all of the ethical norms. Possible explanations for this result are discussed and implications for future ethics teaching are considered. (shrink)

This article reviews existing state laws related to autonomous vehicle (AV) safety, equity, and automobile insurance. Thirty states were identified with relevant legislation. Of these, most states had one or two relevant laws in place. Many of these laws were related to safety and insurance requirements. Data are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of these laws in order to guide further policy development.

Sentences such as “The ship was sunk to collect the insurance” exhibit an unusual form of anaphora, implicit control, where neither anaphor nor antecedent is audible. The non-finite reason clause has an understood subject, PRO, that is anaphoric; here it may be understood as naming the agent of the event of the host clause. Yet since the host is a short passive, this agent is realized by no audible dependent. The putative antecedent to PRO is therefore implicit, which it normally (...) cannot be. What sorts of representations subserve the comprehension of this dependency? Here we present four self-paced reading time studies directed at this question. Previous work showed no processing cost for implicit vs. explicit control, and took this to support the view that PRO is linked syntactically to a silent argument in the passive. We challenge this conclusion by reporting that we also find no processing cost for remote implicit control, as in: “The ship was sunk. The reason was to collect the insurance.” Here the dependency crosses two independent sentences, and so cannot, we argue, be mediated by syntax. Our Experiments 1–4 examined the processing of both implicit (short passive) and explicit (active or long passive) control in both local and remote configurations. Experiments 3 and 4 added either “3 days ago” or “just in order” to the local conditions, to control for the distance between the passive and infinitival verbs, and for the predictability of the reason clause, respectively. We replicate the finding that implicit control does not impose an additional processing cost. But critically we show that remote control does not impose a processing cost either. Reading times at the reason clause were never slower when control was remote. In fact they were always faster. Thus, efficient processing of local implicit control cannot show that implicit control is mediated by syntax; nor, in turn, that there is a silent but grammatically active argument in passives. (shrink)

Reflection Principles are commonly thought to produce only strong axioms of infinity consistent with V = L. It would be desirable to have some notion of strong reflection to remedy this, and we have proposed Global Reflection Principles based on a somewhat Cantorian view of the universe. Such principles justify the kind of cardinals needed for, inter alia , Woodin’s Ω-Logic.

El tema de la libertad no ha sido considerado sistemáticamente por Ockham; por ello la autora lo analiza desde la circunscripción de los presupuestos metodológicos transitados por el Venerabilis Inceptor para llegar a su elaboración. Se fundamenta, en un primer momento, la nueva justificación gnoseo-ontológica de la realidad propuesta en el ockhamismo. Ello permite definir los límites en los cuales se inscribe el tema según un modelo fuertemente inspirado en el principio de la omnipotencia divina. La exposición ockhamista utiliza el (...) lenguaje y la doctrina aristotélica del libre arbitrio, pero desde una semántica completamente diversa; pues la libre elección aristotélica se produce a partir de un primer reconocimiento de opciones entre las que el agente elige; de allí que la libertad resulte una función del intelecto. Ockham desestima este elemento fundamental del aristotelismo al invertir la perspectiva del análisis; sostiene que la voluntad es un poder activo cuya opción fundamental -actuar o no actuar- no depende del intelecto sino de ella misma como causa sui. La metafísica y la antropología que sostienen esta concepción han sido modificadas sustancialmente respecto de las posiciones dominantes del siglo XIII: la naturaleza carece de una orientación específica; no está abierta, ni determinada por la verdad ni por el bien. Sólo el agente libre y consciente actúa en vista de un fin que él mismo se impone, mientras que el universo físico es predecible y perfectamente determinado. La libertad aparece como un comienzo frente a la determinación natural, configurándose, así, la primera versión medieval del dilema moderno de la libertad versus el determinismo. (shrink)

The comprehension of anaphoric relations may be guided not only by discourse, but also syntactic information. In the literature on online processing, however, the focus has been on audible pronouns and descriptions whose reference is resolved mainly on the former. This paper examines one relation that both lacks overt exponence, and relies almost exclusively on syntax for its resolution: adjunct control, or the dependency between the null subject of a non-finite adjunct and its antecedent in sentences such as Mickey talked (...) to Minnie before ___ eating. Using visual world eyetracking, we compare the time course of interpreting this null subject and overt pronouns (Mickey talked to Minnie before he ate). We show that when control structures are highly frequent, listeners are just as quick to resolve reference in either case. When control structures are less frequent, reference resolution based on structural information still occurs upon hearing the non-finite verb, but more slowly, especially when unaided by structural and referential predictions. This may be due to increased difficulty in recognizing that a referential dependency is necessary. These results indicate that in at least some contexts, referential expressions whose resolution depends on very different sources of information can be resolved approximately equally rapidly, and that the speed of interpretation is largely independent of whether or not the dependency is cued by an overt referring expression. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the event in International Relations (IR) through the writings of Hannah Arendt. The event has for too long been neglected in IR; international events are overwhelmingly conceived as mere happenings that have meaning only within the process and temporal structure of the theory from which they are understood, and as holding no or only limited meaning in and of themselves. In her work on political theory and her reflections on totalitarianism, however, Arendt elaborates a rich view of (...) the event and its relationship to history, one that offers an alternative way of thinking about international relations. Arendt urges us to remain open to the possibility, however difficult, of conceiving of the event as meaningful outside of the processes within which our established mode of thoughts would have us subsume it. This requires on the part of the historian a commitment to judgement, to a recognition of the importance of imagination and impartiality that gives meaning to the event for others. In explicating Arendt's complex notion of the genuine political event, the paper aims not merely to demonstrate the intrinsic interest of this conception of the event to her thought, but to add to the small but growing number of works in IR that have found fruitful new avenues of thought in Arendt's various writings, and also to recent discussions on the proper relationship between history and IR theory. (shrink)

Inleidend overzicht van de wijsgerige ethiek.

Scientific realists have suggested that changes in our scientific communities over the course of their history have rendered those communities progressively less vulnerable to the problem of unconcieved alternatives over time. I argue in response not only that the most fundamental historical transformations of the scientific enterprise have generated steadily mounting obstacles to revolutionary, transformative, or unorthodox scientific theorizing, but also that we have substantial independent evidence that the institutional apparatus of contemporary scientific inquiry fosters an exceedingly and increasingly theoretically (...) conservative form of that inquiry. I conclude that contemporary scientific communities are actually more vulnerable to the problem of unconceived alternatives than their historical predecessors, and I briefly suggest how we might seek to pursue scientific inquiry in a less theoretically conservative way. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the contemporary business ethics narrative by proposing an approach to corporate ethical decision making (EDM) which serves as an alternative to the imposition of codes and standards to address the ethical consequences of grand challenges, like COVID-19, which are impacting today’s society. Our alternative approach to EDM embraces the concept of reflexive thinking and ethical consciousness among the individual agents who collectively are the corporation and who make ethical decisions, often in isolation, removed from the collocated (...) corporate setting. We draw on the teachings of the Canadian philosopher and theologian, Fr. Bernard Lonergan, to conceptualize an approach to EDM which focuses on the ethics of the corporate agent by nurturing the universal and invariant structure that is operational in all human beings. Embracing Lonergan’s dynamic cognitive structure of human knowing, and the structure of the human good, we advance a paradigm of EDM in business which emboldens authentic ethical thought, decision making, and action commensurate with virtuous living and germane to human flourishing. Lonergan’s philosophy guides us away from the imposition of over-arching corporate codes of ethics and inspires us, as individual agents, to attend to the data of our own consciousness in our ethical decision making. Such cognitional endowment leads us out of the ethics of the ‘timeless present’ (Islam and Greenwood in Journal of Business Ethics 170: 1–4, 2021) towards ethical authenticity in business, leaving us better placed to reflect upon and address the ethical issues emanating from grand challenges like COVID-19. (shrink)

In a metaphysics such as that of Duns Scotus, which is based on contingency, the question arises as to what possibility there is that man, insofar as he is a viator, might reach a true knowledge of nature, and what the value of such knowledge would be, since nature is a system that depends on the divine will as expressed in its potentia ordinata.

Since William of Ockham has never made a systematic and thorough analysis of the anthropological issue, the author reconstructs the theme on the basis of considerations taken from his several physical and theological works. The Ockhamist methodological approach is the same used to study the natural world: experience-based knowledge, individual- based terminist logic and the principle of economy. However, Ockham stresses the individual against the deterministic universe of matter. It is a privileged entity: with its nature of material being, it (...) takes part of the features and perfections of the natural world- both inanimate and animate beings; and with its freedom, it infinitely transcends the deterministic universe of physics. Taking the above as a starting point, the author considers, firstly, the physical and metaphysical definitions given by the philosopher; and she shows the consequences resulting from them and the specific limitations established by Ockham. Then, she analyzes the main constituent of both definitions: the spiritual soul; she does so by examining the main features is a central point in the Ockhamist anthropology where the mere reason is insufficient to reach the truth; it is the faith the one that should complete the scope of this knowledge. (shrink)

Ockham's view of time agrees with that of Aristotle (Phys. 218b 21- 219b 5) and Averroes (com. 98, 132 and 133), for whom time and movement always correspond and define one another. But the difference between Ockham and the above-mentioned philosophers was one of conception. Ockham considers time as nother facet of individual existence. Firstly, this work focuses on the determination of time reality and its definition. Secondly, It analyses the problem of the measurement of time: the circularity of time (...) and the measurement of motion had been already noticed by Augustinus; the details of Ockham's argument show dependence on Confessions XI, 21, 24; and especially 26. (shrink)

Burley ha de ser contado entre los más distinguidos comentaristas de Aristóteles en el siglo XIV. En el análisis de la teoría del número de los principios del ente natural y de su particular concepto de privación Burley enuncia su posición ultrarrealista en torno al problema de los universales. En efecto, los principios del ente natural son para Burley tres: materia, forma y privación que se distinguen según su esencia, y por tanto, también numéricamente. El Doctor Planus sostiene, así, una (...) perspectiva semántica donde la estructura del lenguaje es una función refleja respecto de la realidad, sustancialmente opuesta a la enunciada por Ockham en su Expositio librorum Physicorum ; y a la que combate enérgicamente. El presente trabajo reconstruye la doctrina en torno a los principios de la generación natural sostenida por el autor, establece sus fundamentos a partir de una particular posición gnoseo-ontológica y determina los vínculos de dependencia respecto de la doctrina del Venerabilis Inceptor, procurando reconstruir, así, un tramo de la historiografía física del siglo XIV. (shrink)

La passion de l'unité : tel semble avoir été l'un des principaux moteurs de l'activité diplomatique et intellectuelle du cardinal Nicolas de Cues (1401-1464).