For stakeholders, such as investors and lenders, to appropriately assess a company's financial performance, the reported accounting earnings must closely reflect the economic reality of the organization's financial activity throughout the reporting period. The degree to which reported earnings capture economic reality is called earnings quality. Managers have an ethical obligation to report high quality earnings to interested stakeholders in a timely matter. Accounting research has identified conditions within an organization, such as management compensation contracts and pending litigation that can (...) impact earnings quality. We extend this line of research by exploring whether another characteristic of an organization, gender diversity in senior management, influences the quality of reported earnings. Companies with more women in senior management are found to be more profitable and have higher stock returns after initial public offerings than those with fewer women in the management ranks. Our findings suggest that the improved bottom line for companies with more women senior executives is not produced through the management of earnings or lower quality earnings. Instead, earnings quality is positively associated with gender diversity in senior management. (shrink)

This volume explores the relationship between experience and theory in Indian social sciences in the form of a dialogue. It focuses on questions of Dalit experience and untouchability. While Gopal Guru argues that only those who have lived lives as subalterns can represent them accurately, Sundar Sarukkai feels that people located outside the community can also represent them. Thematically divided into five sections, the first discusses the problems associated with theory in the social sciences in the Indian context. The (...) next makes inquiries into the nature of personal and collective experience. The third explores the larger connection between ethics and theory in India, both in the natural and social sciences. The fourth examines the ontological and epistemological nature of experience itself and the politics of experience, and the last focuses on the experience and theory of experience in India. The authors invoke the image of a cracked mirror to suggest a more complex and distorted relation between experience and theory."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

There is a dearth of business ethics research on family firms, despite the importance of such firms to the US economy. We answer Vazquez’s call to examine the intersection of family-firm research and business ethics, by investigating whether external auditors assess higher risk of fraud in family firms. We test the contradictory predictions of two dominant theoretical perspectives in family-firm research—entrenchment theory and alignment theory. We conduct an experiment with highly experienced external audit professionals, who assess the risk of fraud (...) and make client acceptance decisions for family firms versus non-family firms with different strength of corporate governance: strong versus weak audit committees. We find that auditors assess the risk of fraud as higher for family firms than for non-family firms, consistent with the predictions of entrenchment theory. Auditors are also less likely to make client acceptance recommendations for family firms. The strength of the AC moderates the family-firm effect, whereby auditors assess family firms with weak ACs to have the highest fraud risk and to be the least desirable audit clients. Our findings suggest that auditors perceive more severe agency conflicts to be present in family firms than in non-family firms, consistent with entrenchment theory, according to which family members may behave opportunistically to extract rents and potentially expropriate the firm’s resources at the expense of minority shareholders. (shrink)

A comprehensive analysis of all of Schmitt's major works--his books, articles & pamphlets from 1919 to 1950--presented in an arresting narrative form.

Anthropologists often claim to have understood an ethical outlook that they nevertheless believe is largely false. Some moral philosophers—e.g., Susan Hurley—argue that this claim is incoherent because understanding an ethical outlook necessarily involves believing it to be largely true. to reach this conclusion, they apply an argument of Donald Davidson's to the ethical case. My central aim is to defend the coherence of the anthropologists' claim against this argument.To begin with, I specify a candidate‐language that contains a significant number of (...) alien thick descriptions. A thick description is a term that has both descriptive and evaluative content, e.g., “courageous.” I then argue that, because of its alien thick descriptions, this candidate‐language cannot be interpreted by someone who adheres to the strictures of Davidson's account of interpretation. to complete my criticism, I demonstrate that the meaningfulness of this candidate‐language cannot be impugned on Davidson's own terms. This involves showing that an interpreter's correctly assigning truthconditions, expressed in her own language, to sentences featuring alien thick descriptions is consistent with her believing those sentences to be false.“In cycle maintenance things are not that involved, but when confusion starts it's a good idea to hold it down by making everything formal and exact. Sometimes just the act of writing down the problems straightens out your head as to what they really are.”Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (shrink)

The book, ‘The Crisis of World and Krishna Pure Monism: A Long Essay’, is more a cathartics of the crisis of world as viewed from the plane of Krishna pure monism than critique of hither to development of idea and philosophy. It sees a correlation of the crisis of world in praxis of objectification of subject, undermining of the knowledge and violation of Krishna pure monism-one has become all and inherence of knowledge. If objectification of subject is juxtaposed with resultant (...) objectification of women, nature, ‘other’, knowledge and idea or Reason or Dharma, it would certainly validate the hypothesis of the essay. The main hypothesis of the essay is as to how objectification of subject on the plane of sciencitization of philosophy and violation of Krishna pure monism-one has become all and inherent knowledge and , and its subversion by muses have led to the crisis of world. The objectification of subject or consciousness or spirit in sciences seems to be cause and effect of objectification of the Woman, Nature, Other, Knowledge and Reason or Idea or Dharma. When one has become all or creator has become creation, the plurality and difference is transitory which appear to have been assigned the permanent value. The transitory value has been given permanence, while the permanent has been dislodged from discourse, conveniently tucked to the abstract. This seems to be real narrative of the crisis of the world. -/- . (shrink)

Scholars have often criticized Hinduism for being an ecologically unfriendly religion, due to being too “other worldly” and “indifferent” toward the natural world. According to Hindus, they argue that the natural world is simply māyā—“ephemeral,” “illusory,” and “unreal.” The Bhāgavata Purāṇa, for example, features over 60 passages that reduce the material world to nothing more than a passing dream. ). Meanwhile, other scholars have tried to correct this image by pointing to passages in Indian sacred literature that highlight the divinity (...) of nature, as well as Hindu rituals that involve worshiping the earth, plants, animals, trees, water, sun, and sky. This paper will argue, however, that both the scholarly criticisms and responses are problematic for two reasons. First, these discussions often assume that a religious practitioner’s beliefs concerning the world and environment directly correspond to her attitude toward, and treatment of, the environment. Second, the scholarly criticisms and responses are based on a narrow interpretation and understanding of the concept of māyā. The word “māyā” has held a variety of meanings in Indian sacred literature. This paper focuses on conceptions of māyā found within the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and explores resources in the Bhāgavata that may be useful for developing a Vaiṣṇava ecotheology. (shrink)

Reasons can interact in a variety of ways to determine what we ought to do. For example, I might face a choice of whether to work on this paper or socialize with friends. And it might be that the only relevant reason to work on this paper is that I have a deadline coming up soon and that the only relevant reason to socialize is that it is relaxing. In this case, whether I ought to work on the paper or (...) ought to stay at home is determined by which of these reasons is stronger. (shrink)

A pioneering work in the field of political and moral theory, this volume explores the complex and varied meanings, contexts, forms, and languages of humiliation within an interdisciplinary framework.

Michael Otsuka sets out to vindicate left-libertarianism, a political philosophy which combines stringent rights of control over one's own mind, body, and life with egalitarian rights of ownership of the world. Otsuka reclaims the ideas of John Locke from the libertarian Right, and shows how his Second Treatise of Government provides the theoretical foundations for a left-libertarianism which is both more libertarian and more egalitarian than the Kantian liberal theories of John Rawls and Thomas Nagel. Otsuka's libertarianism is founded on (...) a right of self-ownership. Here he is at one with 'right-wing' libertarians, such as Robert Nozick, in endorsing the highly anti-paternalistic and anti-moralistic implications of this right. But he parts company with these libertarians in so far as he argues that such a right is compatible with a fully egalitarian principle of equal opportunity for welfare. In embracing this principle, his own version of left-libertarianism is more strongly egalitarian than others which are currently well known. Otsuka argues that an account of legitimate political authority based upon the free consent of each is strengthened by the adoption of such an egalitarian principle. He defends a pluralistic, decentralized ideal of political society as a confederation of voluntary associations. Part I of Libertarianism without Inequality concerns the natural rights of property in oneself and the world. Part II considers the natural rights of punishment and self-defence that form the basis for the government's authority to legislate and punish. Part III explores the nature and limits of the powers of governments which are created by the consensual transfer of the natural rights of the governed. Libertarianism without Inequality is a book which everyone interested in political theory should read. (shrink)

This paper examines the implications of certain social psychological experiments for moral theory—specifically, for virtue theory. Gilbert Harman and John Doris have recently argued that the empirical evidence offered by ‘situationism’ demonstrates that there is no such thing as a character trait. I dispute this conclusion. My discussion focuses on the proper interpretation of the experimental data—the data themselves I grant for the sake of argument. I develop three criticisms of the anti-trait position. Of these, the central criticism concerns three (...) respects in which the experimental situations employed to test someone's character trait are inadequate to the task. First, they do not take account of the subject's own construal of the situation. Second, they include behaviour that is only marginally relevant to the trait in question. Third, they disregard the normative character of the responses in which virtue theory is interested. Given these inadequacies in situationism's operationalized conception of a ‘character trait’, I argue that situationism does not really address the proposition that people have ‘character traits’, properly understood. A fortiori, the social psychological evidence does not refute that proposition. I also adduce some limited experimental evidence in favour of character traits and distil two lessons we can nevertheless learn from situationism. (shrink)

Quelle est la signification historique de l’implosion du néolibéralisme, moins de vingt ans après l’effondrement de l’Union soviétique? Une hypothèse troublante vient à l’esprit. On sait que l’URSS est parvenue au sommet de sa puissance dans les années 1970, juste avant de s’enfoncer dans une spirale de retranchement, de dérive et d’effondrement. Se pourrait-il, par une de ces bonnes vieilles ironies de l’histoire, qu’un revers de fortune comparable guette la superpuissance occidentale? Après tout, on peut voir une forme d’unité des (...) contraires dans l’opposition entre un capitalisme débridé et les économies industrielles planifiées de l’ancien COMECON. La dépression qui s’annonce révélera peut-être que les statistiques économiques nationales de la période de l’économie des bulles étaient des fictions assez comparables à celles qui avaient cours dans le vieux système soviétique. (shrink)

This paper offers four arguments against a moral human right to health, two denying that the right exists and two denying that it would be very useful (even if it did exist). One of my sceptical arguments is familiar, while the other is not.The unfamiliar argument is an argument from the nature of health. Given a realistic view of health production, a dilemma arises for the human right to health. Either a state's moral duty to preserve the health of its (...) citizens is not justifiably aligned in relation to the causes of health or it does not correlate with the human right to health. It follows that no one holds a justified moral human right to health against the state.Education and herd immunity against infectious disease both illustrate this dilemma. In the former case, the state's moral duty correlates with the human right to health only if it demands too much from a cause of health; and in the latter, only if it demands nothing from a cause of health (that is, too little). (shrink)

A novel approach to the crucial role emotion plays in virtuous action What must a person be like to possess a virtue in full measure? What sort of psychological constitution does one need to be an exemplar of compassion, say, or of courage? Focusing on these two examples, Emotion and Virtue ingeniously argues that certain emotion traits play an indispensable role in virtue. With exemplars of compassion, for instance, this role is played by a modified sympathy trait, which is central (...) to enabling these exemplars to be reliably correct judges of the compassionate thing to do in various practical situations. Indeed, according to Gopal Sreenivasan, the virtue of compassion is, in a sense, a modified sympathy trait, just as courage is a modified fear trait. While he upholds the traditional definition of virtue as a species of character trait, Sreenivasan discards other traditional precepts. For example, he rejects the unity of the virtues and raises new questions about when virtue should be taught. Unlike orthodox virtue ethics, moreover, his account does not aspire to rival consequentialism and deontology. Instead Sreenivasan repudiates the ambitions of virtue imperialism. Emotion and Virtue makes significant contributions to moral psychology and the theory of virtue alike. (shrink)

This volume explores the relationship between experience and theory in Indian social sciences in the form of a dialogue. It focuses on questions of Dalit experience and untouchability. While Gopal Guru argues that only those who have lived lives as subalterns can represent them accurately, Sundar Sarukkai feels that people located outside the community can also represent them. Thematically divided into five sections, the first discusses the problems associated with theory in the social sciences in the Indian context. The (...) next makes inquiries into the nature of personal and collective experience. The third explores the larger connection between ethics and theory in India, both in the natural and social sciences. The fourth examines the ontological and epistemological nature of experience itself and the politics of experience, and the last focuses on the experience and theory of experience in India. The authors invoke the image of a cracked mirror to suggest a more complex and distorted relation between experience and theory. This book will interest scholars, researchers, and students of Dalit studies, subaltern studies, and politics. (shrink)

This book discusses Locke's theory of property from both a critical and an interpretative standpoint. The author first develops a comprehensive interpretation of Locke's argument for the legitimacy of private property, and then examines the extent to which the argument is really serviceable in defense of that institution. He contends that a purified version of Locke's argument--one that adheres consistently to the logic of Locke's text while excluding considerations extraneous to his logic--actually does establish the legitimacy of a form of (...) private property. This version, which is both defensible in contemporary, secular terms and is, essentially, egalitarian, should provoke a reassessment of the nature of Locke's relevance to contemporary discussions of distributive justice. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been growing interest in bridging bodies of knowledge from introspective and contemplative traditions with modern neuroscience. By making the primary object of study an individual’s subjective experience, scientists are then confronted with the challenging problem of how to record a given mental state at a given point in time. For simple experiences, such as in facial recognition tasks, an external recording device such as a button box or computer keyboard is adequate. However, these devices pose (...) fundamental problems when attempting to record more subtle states of mind, or to do so in situations where the presence of an external input device would disturb the subject, such as in the case of studying the evolution of internal states of highly advanced meditators. Here, I suggest that variants of the mnemonic techniques used in memory competitions can be used to make measurements in experiments where an external device would be impractical to use, or would unnecessarily disturb the subject. Demographic and performance data from memory competitions suggest that these techniques can be learned by ordinary subjects participating in multi-session experiments, and that, for highly trained individuals, events can be recorded at roughly 400 millisecond intervals for timescales on the order of tens of seconds, and at roughly one-second intervals for sustained periods of one hour or longer. Finally, I discuss the relationship of the current proposal to descriptive experience sampling (DES) and the visualization techniques of the Tibetan meditative tradition. (shrink)

According to the standard view of informed consent, a prospective subject's consent to participate in a research study is invalid if the individual fails to comprehend the information about the study standardly disclosed to him. I argue that this involves three mistakes. First, the standard view confuses an ethical aspiration with a minimum ethical standard. Second, it assigns the entire responsibility for producing comprehension in study participants to the investigators. Most importantly, the standard view requires the termination of many otherwise (...) perfectly ethical research studies. This last conclusion follows from appreciating a pervasive phenomenon that is known as the "therapeutic misconception." I argue that a prospective subject's consent to participate in research can be perfectly valid even if he or she does not comprehend the information that investigators are required to disclose. Furthermore, I explain that this alternative view does not in the least compromise the vital goal of ensuring the protection of subjects in research. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The coterminality of nation and state is the central legitimising principle of the modern state, which has recently come to be challenged by a variety of ethnic groups across the world. This essay identifies two such challenges: (a) The Claim of Alternative Statehood, which endorses the coterminality of cultural and political community, challenges the political boundaries of existing nation‐states, and grounds its secessionist demands in a more precise congruence between nationality and state; and (b) The Claim of Alternative Citizenship, (...) which does not threaten the nation‐state, and seeks only protection for the special requirements of cultural community, for which it demands autonomy, agency and rights. Both types of challenge tend to submerge the individual, as they uphold the rival claims of states and cultural communities. It is argued that the failed promise of pluralism in modern multi‐ethnic societies demands a rethinking of the notion of citizenship. Extending citizenship from its location in polity/state to society as such, and providing space for affiliative and affinitive identities in addition to filiative ones, may help to strengthen civil society, within a non‐majoritarian and non‐homogenising political framework. (shrink)

Way back in the 1980s corporations began collecting, combining, and crunching data from sources through-out the enterprise. This approach was widely accepted as a methodology that provides objectivity and trans-parency in decision-making. Good processing of the garnered data paved way for improved analysis of trends and patterns leading to better business and increased profit margins. Corporations began investing in collect-ing, storing, processing and maintaining enterprise wide data. The focus was always on the quality of data and the process of converting (...) it into knowledge that enables right decisions. It was soon realized that a wide range of personal biases has an impact on the way decisions are made. The entire process is replete with ethical dilemmas. This paper provides a framework to understand the interplay of data, information, personal biases, ethics and decision-making. This approach is suitable for every individ-ual, team, organization or a nation. Several years of turmoil in South Africa make it imminent for it to take a fresh look at the way data is transformed into knowledge. The leadership within South Africa has to arrive at wise decisions that can withstand the scrutiny of generations to come. (shrink)

This paper continues a debate among philosophers concerning the implications of situationist experiments in social psychology for the theory of virtue. In a previous paper (2002), I argued among other things that the sort of character trait problematized by Hartshorne and May's (1928) famous study of honesty is not the right sort to trouble the theory of virtue. Webber (2006) criticizes my argument, alleging that it founders on an ambiguity in "cross-situational consistency" and that Milgram's (1974) obedience experiment is immune (...) to the objections I levelled against Hartshorne and May. Here I respond to his criticisms. The most important error in Webber's argument is that it overlooks a distinction between "one time performance" experiments and "iterated trial" experiments. I explain why the former cannot begin to trouble the theory of virtue. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

What is the general will? In this essay, I propose a simple and straightforward answer. Rousseau’s general will, I shall argue, is the totality of unrescinded decisions made by a community—that is, of an association of individuals contractually constituted as a “moral and collective body”—when its deliberation is subject to certain constraints.

This paper discusses obligations of international distributive justice-specifically, obligations rich countries have to transfer resources to poor countries. It argues that the major seven OECD countries each have an obligation to transfer at least one percent of their GDP to developing countries. -/- The strategy of the paper is to defend this position without having to resolve the many debates that attend questions of international distributive justice. In this respect, it belongs to the neglected category of nonideal theory. The key (...) to the strategy is to show that a significant amount of good would be accomplished by a one percent transfer, despite the fact that one percent is quite a small amount. -/- To make this showing, the paper takes health as a fundamental measure of individual well-being and examines the improvement in life expectancy that would likely result from devoting the one percent transfer to the major determinants of health. It adduces data indicating that substantial progress towards raising life expectancy in developing countries to the global average of 64.5 years can be expected from expenditures of $125 per capita, divided between health care, education, and basic nutrition and income support. A one percent transfer from the major seven is enough to cover expenditures on that scale for the poorest fifth of the world's population. (shrink)

A long-debated question in the philosophy of health, and contingent disciplines, is the extent to which wise clinical practice (“clinical wisdom”) is, or could be, compatible with empirically validated medicine (“evidence-based medicine”—EBM). Here we respond to Baum-Baicker and Sisti, who not only suggest that these two types of knowledge are divided due to their differing sources, but also that EBM can sometimes even hurt wise clinical practice. We argue that the distinction between EBM and clinical wisdom is poorly defined, unsupported (...) by the methodology employed, and ultimately incorrect; crucial differences exist, we argue, not in the source of a particular piece of clinical knowledge, but in its dependability. In light of this subtle but fundamental revision, we explain how clinical wisdom and EBM are—by necessity—complementary, rather than in conflict. We elaborate on how recognizing this relationship can have far-reaching implications for the domains of clinical practice, medical education, and health policy. (shrink)

In this article, I explore some advantages of viewing well-being in terms of an individual's health status. Principally, I argue that this perspective makes it easier to establish that rich countries at least have an obligation to transfer 1 percent of their GDP to poor countries. If properly targeted at the fundamental determinants of health in developing countries, this transfer would very plausibly yield a disproportionate `bang for the buck' in terms of individual well-being. This helps to explain how the (...) obligation can be both light enough in its burden on the rich to avoid being `too demanding' and yet also bountiful enough in its effects to be worthy of the status of a `minimum obligation'. The advantages I enunciate are particularly relevant to establishing an obligation in the context of a non-ideal theory of international justice, which aims to set interim targets for practical action before an ideal theory has been settled. Key Words: health • international justice • foreign aid • determinants of health • non-ideal theory. (shrink)

Gopal Sreenivasan, 201 West Duke Building, Box 90743, Durham NC USA 27708. Email: gopal.sreenivasan{at}duke.edu ' + u + '@ ' + d + ' '/ /- ->This paper reviews the epidemiological debate between the relative income hypothesis and the absolute income hypothesis. The dispute between these rival hypotheses has to do with whether an adequate account of the relationship between income and life expectancy requires the definition of ‘income’ to include any comparative element. I discuss the evidence offered (...) for the relative hypothesis, as well as two important criticisms that have been levelled against this evidence. I also offer some critical reflections on the debate from a philosophical standpoint concerned with the ethics of population health. Both hypotheses agree that a redistribution of income towards the worst off will improve their life expectancy. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper examines the fairness of avoidable inequalities in health. It contrasts two approaches to this question, a direct approach and an indirect approach. Most of the discussion focuses on the indirect approach advocated by Daniels, Kennedy and Kawachi (2000). Their argument that avoidable inequalities in health are not unfair when their causes are otherwise fair is criticised on two counts. First, it encounters a surprising difficulty when one attends carefully to the point at which ethics intersects with epidemiology here. (...) Second, it fails to address the fundamental issue, which is whether any version of the direct approach is valid. (shrink)

Anthropologists often claim to have understood an ethical outlook that they nevertheless believe is largely false. Some moral philosophers---e.g., Susan Hurley---argue that this claim is incoherent because understanding an ethical outlook necessarily involves believing it to be largely true. To reach this conclusion, they apply an argument of Donald Davidson’s to the ethical case. My central aim is to defend the coherence of the anthropologists’ claim against this argument.To begin with, I specify a candidate-language that contains a significant number of (...) alien thick descriptions. A thick description is a term that has both descriptive and evaluative content, e.g., “courageous.” I then argue that, because of its alien thick descriptions, this candidate-language cannot be interpreted by someone who adheres to the strictures of Davidson’s account of interpretation. To complete my criticism, I demonstrate that the meaningfulness of this candidate-language cannot be impugned on Davidson’s own terms. This involves showing that an interpreter’s correctly assigning truth-conditions, expressed in her own language, to sentences featuring alien thick descriptions is consistent with her believing those sentences to be false. (shrink)

There are various grounds on which one may wish to distinguish a right to health care from a right to health. In this article, I review some old grounds before introducing some new grounds. But my central task is to argue that separating a right to health care from a right to health has objectionable consequences. I offer two main objections. The domestic objection is that separating the two rights prevents the state from fulfilling its duty to maximise the health (...) it provides each citizen from its fixed health budget. The international objection is that separating a human right to health care fails the moral requirement that, for any given moral human right, the substance to which any two right-holders are entitled be of an equal standard. (shrink)

I distinguish four different interpretations of ‘equality of opportunity.’ We get four interpretations because a neglected ambiguity in ‘opportunity’ intersects a well-known ambiguity in ‘equality.’ The neglected ambiguity holds between substantive and non-substantive conceptions of ‘opportunity’ and the well-known ambiguity holds between comparative and non-comparative conceptions of ‘equality.’ Among other things, distinguishing these four interpretations reveals how misleading ‘equal opportunity for advantage’ formulations of luck egalitarianism can be. These formulations are misleading in so far as they obscure the difference between (...) two separate claims about which inequalities are consistent with true equality. Luck egalitarianism claims that inequalities that have been chosen in some suitable sense are consistent with true equality, while the traditional ideal of equality of opportunity only claims that inevitable inequalities that have been determined through fair competitions are consistent with true equality. Obscuring the difference between these two claims therefore serves both to arrogate the rhetorical advantages of the traditional ideal to luck egalitarianism and to cover over a limitation to luck egalitarianism’s ambition to provide a comprehensive principle of distributive justice. (shrink)

In their latest contribution to a series of important joint papers on informed consent, Joseph Millum and Danielle Bromwich analyze and reject what they call the “standard view” on informed...

For philosophers, rights against the world are equivalent to rights in rem. Contrary to what Hart thought, however, this does not make them equivalent to general rights. Rights in rem contrast with rights in personam, whereas general rights contrast with special rights. As I explain, rights against the world can be either general rights or special rights. My explanation follows Waldron’s strategy of exhibiting property rights as justified by Locke’s theory of property as a case of rights in rem that (...) are also special rights. Moreover, despite what ‘in rem’ means in Latin, rights against the world include more than property rights. For example, they also include moral human rights. With moral human rights and property rights alike, the correlative duties are borne by ‘everyone’, understood in a dynamic sense I undertake to specify. (shrink)

John Locke affirms a right to revolt against tyranny, but he denies that a minority of citizens is at liberty to exercise it unless a majority of their fellow citizens concurs in their judgment that the government is a tyranny. In a recent article, Massimo Renzo takes an equivalent position, on which a revolutionary vanguard requires the consent of the domestic majority before being permitted to revolt. Against Locke and Renzo, I argue that a minority of citizens can have a (...) liberty to revolt, whatever the domestic majority may hold. My argument concentrates on the moral force of majority rule, which turns out to presuppose the satisfaction of a number of background conditions. When any of these conditions fails to obtain, no domestic majority can justifiably block a minority’s liberty to revolt against tyranny. For the purposes of the theory of revolution, this minority has to be large enough to have a reasonable prospect of (military) success. Without that prospect, the minority will be anyhow forbidden to revolt, on grounds familiar from just war theory. However, for the purposes of the theory of political legitimacy, prospects of success are irrelevant. All that matters are the conditions under which any citizen is released from their ordinary duty not to overthrow the government. (shrink)

This paper examines the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which is one of the World Trade Organisations free trade agreements. In particular, I examine the extent to which the GATS unduly restricts the scope for national democratic choice. For purposes of illustration, I focus on the domestic health system as the subject of policy choice. I argue that signatories to the GATS effectively acquire a constitutional obligation to maintain a domestic health sector with a certain minimum degree of (...) privatisation. Like constitutional obligations, the restrictions the GATS imposes on the freedom of future generations to structure their domestic health sector are (i) very difficult, though not strictly impossible, to alter; and (ii) not chosen in any ordinary sense by the subject generation. To gain democratic legitimacy, therefore, the relevant provisions of the GATS must pass some higher standard of democratic scrutiny, such as ratification by a super-majority. Ordinary legislative ratification does not suffice. (shrink)

We examine the relation between earnings information content and the use of trust words, such as “character,” “ethics,” and “honest,” in the MD&A section of 10-K. We find that earnings announcements of firms using trust words have lower information content than earnings announcements of firms that do not use trust words. We also find that the value relevance of earnings is lower for firms using trust words than those not using trust words. Further, firms using trust words are more likely (...) to receive a comment letter from the SEC, pay higher audit fees, and have lower corporate social responsibility scores. Overall, our results suggest that firms that use trust words in the 10-K are associated with negative outcomes, and trust words are an inverse measure of trust. (shrink)

Delegating a policy question to a panel of experts is similar in some ways to deferring to an expert about the right answer to some personal decision, but also crucially distinct from it. Most importantly, delegation is compatible with understanding why the expert’s decision is correct or incorrect, whereas deference excludes such understanding. As a matter of administrative logic, however, delegating agents cannot be required to understand whether the policy questions they delegate are decided correctly. This has important implications for (...) the role of moral experts in delegated policy-making. Notably, while conventional academic wisdom regards deference to moral experts as highly objectionable, no analogous objection applies when policy questions are delegated to panels that include moral experts. (shrink)

How does creolization fare as a social-scientific concept? While Jane Gordon seeks to underscore the potential such a concept might have in the social sciences and philosophy, her discussants Gopal Guru, Kipton E. Jensen, Mickaella Perina, and Sundar Sarukkai draw attention to descriptive and normative issues that need to be addressed before arguments formulating and enacting creolization processes can be brought into domains of life from which they have been historically excluded.

Neurons have developed elaborate mechanisms for sorting of proteins to their destination in dendrites and axons as well as dynamic local trafficking. Recent evidence suggests that polarized axonal sorting of β‐site converting enzyme 1 (BACE1), a type I transmembrane aspartyl protease involved in Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis, entails an unusual journey. In hippocampal neurons, BACE1 internalized from dendrites is conveyed in recycling endosomes via unidirectional retrograde transport towards the soma and sorted to axons where BACE1 becomes enriched. In comparison to (...) other transmembrane proteins that undergo transcytosis or elimination in somatodendritic compartment, vectorial transport of internalized BACE1 in dendrites is unique and intriguing. Dysfunction of protein transport contributes to pathogenesis of AD and other neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, characterization of BACE1 transcytosis is an important addition to the multiple lines of evidence that highlight the crucial role played by endosomal trafficking pathway as well as axonal sorting mechanisms in AD pathogenesis. (shrink)