Taking Emerson as his starting point, Cornel West’s basic task in this ambitious enterprise is to chart the emergence, development, decline, and recent resurgence of American pragmatism. John Dewey is the central figure in West’s pantheon of pragmatists, but he treats as well such varied mid-century representatives of the tradition as Sidney Hook, C. Wright Mills, W. E. B. Du Bois, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling. West’s "genealogy" is, ultimately, a very personal work, for it is imbued throughout with the (...) author’s conviction that a thorough reexamination of American pragmatism may help inspire and instruct contemporary efforts to remake and reform American society and culture. "West... may well be the pre-eminent African American intellectual of our generation."—The Nation "_The American Evasion of Philosophy_ is a highly intelligent and provocative book. Cornel West gives us illuminating readings of the political thought of Emerson and James; provides a penetrating critical assessment of Dewey, his central figure; and offers a brilliant interpretation—appreciative yet far from uncritical—of the contemporary philosopher and neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty.... What shines through, throughout the work, is West's firm commitment to a radical vision of a philosophic discourse as inextricably linked to cultural criticism and political engagement."—Paul S. Boyer, professor emeritus of history, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Wisconsin Project on American Writers Frank Lentricchia, General Editor. (shrink)

Beginning with an exemplary case study, this paper diagnoses and analyses some important strategies of evasion and factors of hindrance that are met in the teaching of medical ethics to undergraduate medical students. Some of these inhibitions are inherent to ethical theories; others are connected with the nature of medicine or cultural trends. It is argued that in order to avoid an attitude of evasion in medical ethics teaching, a philosophical theory of emotions is needed that is able (...) to clarify on a conceptual level the ethical importance of emotions. An approach is proposed with the help of the emotion theory Martha Nussbaum works out in her book Upheavals of thought. The paper ends with some practical recommendations. (shrink)

" Le besoin d'évasion écrit Emmanuel Lévinas, nous conduit au cœur de la philosophie. Il nous permet de renouveler l'antique problème de l'être en tant qu'être... " C'est dore que, dans ce texte, il choisit - à la faveur d'un thème fortement heideggerien - d'aller à la rencontre des questions qui, toujours, ont guidé sa quête : le besoin d'évasion n'est-il pas le propre d'un être fini? N'aspire-t-il pas à franchir les limites de l'être plutôt qu'à le fuir? Et pourquoi (...) l'être aurait-il besoin de sortir de soi? Sur tous ces points, la méditation d'Emmanuel Lévinas s'affirme ici souveraine et féconde. A s'y engager, tout lecteur se rapprochera de la vérité de son destin au cœur d'une modernité tragique et opaque. (shrink)

Say that a function π:n<ω→n (henceforth called a predictor) k-constantly predicts a real xnω if for almost all intervals I of length k, there is iI such that x(i)=π(x↾i). We study the k-constant prediction number vnconst(k), that is, the size of the least family of predictors needed to k-constantly predict all reals, for different values of n and k, and investigate their relationship.

El taekwondo como arte marcial y disciplina siempre ha sido un medio para garantizar la construcción de personas seriales que toman en cuenta la práctica del respeto y los valores (más allá de la efectividad y el rendimiento deportivos), desde una lógica orientada a constituirlas como líderes en situaciones multidisciplinarias. Uno de los enclaves más comunes que se derivan de su aprendizaje es la perseverancia, que es de importancia para enfrentar las adversidades cotidianas y concretizar proyectos. De allí, es que (...) la paciencia y la contribución consuetudinarias por esa formación suscitan un aval de que se patentizarán esos intereses anhelados. Otro aditamento es la configuración de personas que procuran articular una ideología humanizadora, en la que se muestran igualdad y democracia en la metrópoli. Sin embargo, a la cultura latinoamericana dictatorial (recurro a esta calificación pertinente por apreciarse en estos países disconformidad política, fomento de la corrupción, abusos de poder, crímenes y violaciones a los derechos humanos), no le conviene que existan ciudadanos de esa índole, así como intelectuales que critican las irregularidades de su sistema, porque prevalece un requerimiento implícito por no educar y solo recompensar cuando se aprecian logros inmediatos y cualitativos sin considerar la procedencia. Ante ello, el propósito de esta investigación cuestiona la importancia real que el Estado latinoamericano otorga a los practicantes de taekwondo, siendo sus acciones y sus resultados los que integrarán una representación eficaz que la cultura pretenda imitar para que, de esa forma, se consiga una sociedad democrática, competitiva y transparente. (shrink)

Using an economic bargaining game, we tested for the existence of two phenomena related to social norms, namely norm manipulation – the selection of an interpretation of the norm that best suits an individual – and norm evasion – the deliberate, private violation of a social norm. We found that the manipulation of a norm of fairness was characterized by a self-serving bias in beliefs about what constituted normatively acceptable behaviour, so that an individual who made an uneven bargaining (...) offer not only genuinely believed it was fair, but also believed that recipients found it fair, even though recipients of the offer considered it to be unfair. In contrast, norm evasion operated as a highly explicit process. When they could do so without the recipient's knowledge, individuals made uneven offers despite knowing that their behaviour was unfair. (shrink)

In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud rejects the notion of a biologically determined connection of instinct to object, a position which helps him avoid the designation of all variations from heterosexuality as either “degenerate” or “pathological.” However, the gender roles and relations commonly attributed to heterosexuality are already implicit in his understanding of sexual instinct and aim. Consequently, even variations from the normal sexual object and aim exemplify, on his interpretation, the clichéd hierarchical opposition of femininity and (...) masculinity. Freud’s theory of sexuality thus implies that the erotic bond is inevitably one of domination, and that the only possible human relation is one of subject to object, activity to passivity, whole to part, and owner to property. My primary intention in this paper is to explore, in Freud’s analysis of fetishism, traces of an alternate possibility to oppositional hierarchical gender roles and the negative forms of social relation that rely upon them. While Freud---in keeping with common opinion---characterizes sexual fetishism as a distinctly masculine phenomenon, the text also supports a more interesting interpretation: that the non-pathological fetishist evades the construction of gender in terms of sexual roles and that, consequently, fetishism can serve as a critique of Freud’s masculine model of sexual instinct and relation. (shrink)

In the fight against racism, philosophy has to interrogate caste in its own histories and current decolonial consensus. Caste has been evading its interrogation as the oldest race theory and racist practice, which continue to oppress the lower-caste peoples who constitute the majority population of the Indian subcontinent. Caste and race are species of the hypophysics of man, which consecrates scaled intrinsic value in human nature through the notion of “being born as” by “being born to.” They are analogues in (...) having the same denigrate-dominate function of exploiting by including as born inferior. However, caste and race are also homologues since the hypophysics of caste has been at the origins of the hypophysics of race from at least the eighteenth century, culminating in the “Aryan doctrine” of the Nazis, now being revived. Caste was the empirical, conceptual, and textual resource for Europeans as it showed that large groups could be dominated as well as excluded through the self-designated superiority, supplied by the Brahminical texts, of the oppressing group. Rather than a colonial construct, caste is the oldest racism, which in colonial times devised new calypsologies—ways to mask itself against rising anticaste thought and politics. Postcolonial and subaltern theories disguise caste’s racism as “religion,” “culture,” and subaltern subjectivity, while some sociologists have denigrated Dalit scholarship as unacademic and emotional. The homologies of caste are still dangerously regnant today. (shrink)

In 1944, Martin Crowe, a Catholic priest, wrote a doctoral dissertation titled The Moral Obligation of Paying Just Taxes. His dissertation summarized and analyzed 500 years of theological and philosophical debate on this topic, much of which took place in Latin. Since Crowe’s dissertation, not much has been written on the topic of tax evasion from an ethical perspective, with a few exceptions. In 1998 and 1999, a few articles were published on the ethics of tax evasion in (...) the Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy. An edited book on this topic was published in 1998. The present paper summarizes, updates and expands on Crowe’s work and the other more recent work that has been published on this topic. Three basic views on the ethics of tax evasion have emerged over the centuries. This article presents and critiques those three views and raises some questions about points that have not yet been explored in the literature. (shrink)

In his contribution to Cheryl Misak's New Pragmatists volume, David Bakhurst considers the "prospect of a fruitful alliance between [ethical] particularism and pragmatism." 1 In an attempt to show that members of the two camps can "profit from critical engagement with each other's works" (124), he considers how pragmatists might help resolve three outstanding problems for ethical particularists. Unfortunately, his generosity outpaces his imagination, and he does not really find a great deal that pragmatists can contribute. So Bakhurst's potential alliance (...) ends up being a case of convergent evolution. He finds that he and his fellow particularists now occupy positions—positions against, among other .. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the consumer side of consumption tax evasion (CTE), a subcategory of the shadow economy. The ethical dimensions of tax evasion have been effectively captured by the existent literature on tax morale, yet it fails to address the role consumers can play in CTE. Further, there is a shortage of tax morale studies that explore ethical decision making as a process composed of multiple steps and determinants. To bridge these gaps, we turned to the consumer (...) ethics literature and Jones’ issue-contingent model of ethical decision making. We developed the conceptual model of consumer ethical decision making for CTE by incorporating four key elements from the issue-contingent model, i.e. moral recognition, moral judgement, moral intention and moral intensity, while personal moral philosophies were introduced as an antecedent to the consumer ethical decision-making process. The study was conducted on a sample of consumers from Slovenia, where CTE is a widespread phenomenon. The findings confirm that consumers’ recognition of CTE as a moral issue is influenced by their moral philosophy and perceptions regarding the magnitude of CTE’s consequences, their visibility, probability, and temporal immediacy. These perceptions also play an important role in determining consumers’ moral judgements and intentions regarding CTE. Moreover, through the process of moral recognition and moral judgement, consumers form intentions to participate in, or avoid CTE. The study holds important implications for public policy makers who are trying to reduce the tax gap in times of economic instability and fiscal crisis. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine income tax evasion in Jordan and set forth various cures for this problem.

Sartre fits fully within the phenomenological tradition inaugurated by Husserl, although he somewhat reelaborates it in an original way, on the basis of Heidegger’s philosophy, with the aim of outlining, in a first stage of his thoughts dating back to the publication of Being and Nothingness, the features stemming from his peculiar atheistic existentialism. Subsequently, in the mature stage of his intellectual itinerary, Sartre will attempt to combine the existentialist ideas with the basic principles of Marxism, a synthesis that will (...) create important works such as Search for a Method and Critique of Dialectical Reason. This chapter analyses time from the phenomenological perspective of the Sartrean ontology of temporality. This analysis allows to conceive the typically human “existential time” as a permanent existence out of oneself. For this purpose, we will retrace the fundamentals of Sartre’s phenomenological ontology outlined in his most important work of 1943, Being and Nothingness, focusing in particular on the structures of consciousness understood as “être-pour-soi”, i.e. the conditions of man’s “absolute freedom”, which Sartre refers to when he shows the one “pour-soi” as the being who is pure nothingness. (shrink)

The ethics of tax evasion has been discussed sporadically in the theological and philosophical literature for at least 500 years. Martin Crowe wrote a doctoral thesis that reviewed much of that literature in 1944. The debate revolved around about 15 issues. Over the centuries, three main views evolved on the topic. But the business ethics literature has paid scant attention to this issue, perhaps because of the belief that tax evasion is always unethical. This paper reports the results (...) of an empirical study of opinion in Utah and Florida. A survey of accounting students was conducted to determine the extent of their agreement or disagreement with the 15 main issues that Crowe (1944) identified plus three more recent issues. The arguments that have been made over the centuries to justify tax evasion were ranked to determine which arguments are strongest and which are weakest. Scores were compared between samples to determine whether the responses were significantly different. (shrink)

We present an algorithm that can anticipate tax evasion by modeling the co-evolution of tax schemes with auditing policies. Malicious tax non-compliance, or evasion, accounts for billions of lost revenue each year. Unfortunately when tax administrators change the tax laws or auditing procedures to eliminate known fraudulent schemes another potentially more profitable scheme takes it place. Modeling both the tax schemes and auditing policies within a single framework can therefore provide major advantages. In particular we can explore the (...) likely forms of tax schemes in response to changes in audit policies. This can serve as an early warning system to help focus enforcement efforts. In addition, the audit policies can be fine tuned to help improve tax scheme detection. We demonstrate our approach using the iBOB tax scheme and show it can capture the co-evolution between tax evasion and audit policy. Our experiments shows the expected oscillatory behavior of a biological co-evolving system. (shrink)

Vice epistemology studies how character traits, attitudes, or thinking styles systematically get in the way of knowledge, while doxastic responsibility is concerned with what kinds of responses are appropriate towards agents who believe badly. This paper identifies a new connection between these two fields, arguing that our propensity to take responsibility for our doxastic failures is directly relevant for vice epistemology, and in particular, understanding the social obstacles to knowledge that epistemic vices can create. This is because responses to norm (...) violations are an important mechanism by which norms are upheld, and maintaining epistemic norms is crucial for our collective epistemic successes. This paper then identifies a new kind of vice, one which is bad precisely because of the way it undermines the epistemic norms that our blaming practices help maintain, and thus the benefits that said norms create. I call this vice epistemic evasiveness, and it concerns the attitude that one takes towards their own performance as an epistemic agent. Evasiveness is bad because it creates uncertainty about which agents are reliable, it prevents holders of this attitude from learning from their mistakes, and it signals to third parties that the norm is not being upheld, making them less likely to follow the norm. (shrink)

This paper focuses specifically on how religions shape attitudes towards ethics of tax evasion. Firstly, the paper begins with an overview of the four views on the ethics of tax evasion that have emerged over the centuries, then goes on to review some of the theoretical and empirical literature on the subject. The empirical part of the study examines attitudes toward tax evasion in 57 countries from the perspectives of six religions using the data from Wave 6 (...) of the World Values Survey. The sample population is more than 52,000. More than a dozen demographic variables were examined. The results study found that attitude toward cheating on taxes does differ by religion. (shrink)

Small businesses in developing countries, as part of global supply chains, are sometimes assumed to respond in a straightforward manner to institutional demands for improved working conditions. This article problematizes this perspective. Drawing upon extensive qualitative data from Tirupur’s knitwear export industry in India, we highlight owner-managers’ agency in avoiding or circumventing these demands. The small businesses here actively engage in irresponsible business practices and “evasion” institutional work to disrupt institutional demands in three ways: undermining assumptions and values, dissociating (...) consequences, and accumulating autonomy and political strength. This “evasion” work is supported by three conditions: void, distance, and contradictions. Through detailed empirical findings, the article contributes to research on both small business social responsibility and institutional work. (shrink)

This paper explores attitudes regarding tax evasion and the relationship between personal moral philosophy and such attitudes in a weak tax environment. The results confirm the multidimensionality of tax evasion attitudes. Idealism was negatively related to self-interest tax evasion attitudes while relativism was positively related to such attitudes. Idealism was also positively related to tax evasion attitudes stemming from concerns about the justice of the tax system. Idealists in a weak tax environment seemingly go through a (...) cognitive reframing process where they recognize that the tax system is unfair, and accordingly tax evasion is a way to serve a different moral absolute, that is of equity, rather than another different moral absolute, which is fulfilling obligations to governments. The results are also explained in light of the suggested low moral intensity of tax evasion among respondents. Policy implications are presented. (shrink)

The paper is based on the following two assumptions. Firstly, evasive utterances are those which are semantically irrelevant to the question they are an answer to. Secondly, they can be divided into two main categories — overt and covert.The question to be asked as regards covert evasion is: How is it possible that an evasive speaker can nevertheless count on her/his utterance being considered cooperative? The objective of this paper is to analyse the means which are used by evasive (...) speakers to pretend that their utterance does cooperatively answer the question and thereby meet its conversational demand.Semantic and pragmatic means were identified as serving the purpose of concealing evasive action. Within the former ones operation within the same topic as the questioner, and, secondly, equipping her/his evasive utterance with some formal characteristics which may indicate its relationship with the question, were listed. On a pragmatic level, the speaker may explicitly or implicitly indicate her/his willingness to answer the question: by statement or implication as well as licenses of uncooperativeness or hedging. (shrink)

While introspective methods went out of favour with the decline of Titchener’s analytic school, many important questions concern the rehabilitation of introspection in contemporary psychology. Hatfield rightly points out that introspective methods should not be confused with analytic ones, and goes on to describe their “ineliminable role” in perceptual psychology. Here I argue that certain methodological conventions within psychophysics reflect a continued uncertainty over appropriate use of subjects’ perceptual observations and the reliability of their introspective judgements. My first claim is (...) that different psychophysical methods do not rely equally on the introspective capabilities of experimental subjects. I contrast “minimally-introspective” tasks with “introspection-heavy” ones. It is only in the latter, I argue, that introspection can be said to have a non-trivial role in the subjects’ performance. My second claim is that my rough-and-ready distinction maps onto a number of important “dichotomies” in vision science. Not coincidentally, the introspection-heavy categorisation captures many of the tasks typically considered less able to yield useful information regarding the processes underlying visual sensation. (shrink)

The most disturbing aspects of the growth of underground economies are the interrelated problems of unreported and unrecorded income. A large and growing underground economy can thwart fiscal efforts to establish budget balance and may significantly undermine the veracity of a nation's economic information system. The notion that economic information is itself endogenous raises the possibility that at least part of the economic malaise observed in most Western nations during the past two decades is essentially the result of a statistical (...) illusion. The essays in this 1989 volume examine the problems of defining, measuring and understanding the implications of the underground economies that have emerged in many of the world's developed nations. Empirical chapters examine the conceptual problems of how to measure a phenomenon that attempts to defy detection. Alternative measurement procedures are evaluated. Specific studies are included for the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Norway, Canada, France, the Soviet Union and Hungary. (shrink)

From the first days of conscription, physicians have declared their opposition to unjust wars by using their good offices to aid draft evaders.

This article begins with a review of the literature on the ethics of tax evasion and identifies the three main views that have emerged over the centuries, namely always ethical, sometimes ethical, and never or almost never ethical. It then reports on the results of a survey of HK and U.S. university business students who were asked to express their opinions on the 15 statements covering the three main views. The data are then analyzed to determine which of the (...) three viewpoints is dominant among the sample population. Although it was found that HK scores were significantly different from the U.S. scores, both HK and U.S. respondents were opposed to the view that tax evasion is always or almost always ethical. The strongest arguments justifying tax evasion were in cases where the government was corrupt, the tax system was unfair and unaffordable. The weakest arguments for justifying tax evasion were in cases where there was a selfish motive. The underlying cultural differences are further explored in hope of accounting for differing perceptions of ethics of tax evasion. Policy implications for increasing people’s awareness of ethics on tax evasion are also highlighted. (shrink)

Tocqueville's contradictory writings on imperialism have produced interpretations that range from unrepentant realism to lapsed universalism. This essay considers the moral psychology that underlies his position. It argues that Tocqueville's writings on colonialism exemplify his resort to apologia when his deepest apprehensions are aroused and offers a typology of Tocquevillean rhetorical evasions: the mechanisms by which he attempts to quell perceptions of moral dissonance. It also argues that Tocqueville's evasion of the challenge of Algeria illustrates a particular kind of (...) liberal failure and a peculiar liberal temptation. By avoiding rather than confronting the conflicting intuitions underlying his moral judgments, Tocqueville betrays the promise of his liberalism by failing to explore the tensions implicit in the practice of liberal democracy. These strategies to deaden awareness of complicity in colonial violence appear disturbingly familiar in a world in which national interests and universally acknowledged "human maxims" increasingly collide in the liberal conscience. (shrink)

Mon évasion (2008) de Benoîte Groult est une autobiographie de femme qui s’inscrit non seulement dans l’histoire du féminisme, mais représente ici une féminité complexe et nuancée constituant l’axe du développement de la personnalité et aussi une certaine manière de se raconter. La femme y est généralement représentée à travers ses relations humaines, en tant que membre d’un « couple ». Cette nouvelle manière (féminine ?) de se raconter a aussi des conséquences sur l’écriture : outre l’alternance constante entre le (...) récit et le discours du narrateur, la discontinuité structurelle (insertion des interviews, réécriture d’une bande dessinée), et les problèmes de dénomination du personnage, le texte de Groult présente des emplois variés des temps verbaux et des pronoms personnels : en fait, on y trouve des passages écrits au passé composé, au présent, au passé simple combinés aux pronoms personnels à la première, à la troisième ou à la deuxième personne. Il s’ensuit que l’espace autobiographique de Mon évasion revêt une complexité inédite : récit, interviews, bande dessinée et une photo sur la couverture contribuent tous, en tant que supports variés, à une pluralité des temporalités qui amènent de nouvelles formes des représentations de la féminité. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the conceptual and moral issues raised by illegal actions in health care. The author first identifies several types of illegal action, concentrating on civil disobedience, conscientious objection or refusal, and evasive noncompliance. Then he sketches a framework for the moral justification of these types of illegal action. Finally, he applies the conceptual and normative frameworks to several major cases of illegal action in health care, such as "mercy killing" and some decisions not to treat incompetent (...) patients. Keywords: illegal actions, mercy killing, non-treatment of incompetent patients, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, evasive non-compliance, moral justification and disobedience, dissent in health care CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In this study, we reconcile conflicting findings from the extant literature on the impact of tax system parameters on tax noncompliance. We argue that social norms play a role of heuristics facilitating tax payers’ response to the instrumental incentives posed by the systemic parameters, such as tax rate and penalties for evasion, and thus moderate the effect of those parameters on willingness to evade taxes. Relying on a unique survey experiment conducted in fourteen countries of Central-Eastern Europe, we demonstrate (...) two types of a conditioning effect of norms. First, the impact of tax rates on respondents’ propensity for tax evasion is moderated by the perceived norms of the society at large. In particular, an increasing tax rate lowers the probability of evasion as long as one views “most others” as honest taxpayers, which highlights the importance of equitability concerns for tax compliance decisions. In contrast, the impact of punishment is moderated by the perceived norms of one’s immediate reference group. Strong subjective compliance norms tend to effectively replace penalties as a mechanism discouraging tax evasion, suggesting that the deterrent effect of a penalty can be entirely suppressed when subjective norms are strong. These findings have important implications for the understanding of tax compliance decisions under different formal and informal regimes. (shrink)