Corporate management is torn between either focusing solely on the interests of stockholders or taking into account the interests of a wide spectrum of stakeholders. Of course, there need be no conflict where taking the wider view is also consistent with maximising stockholder wealth. In this paper, we examine the extent to which a conflict actually exists by examining the relationship between a company's positive and negative corporate social responsibility activities and equity performance. In general, we find little evidence to (...) suggest that managers taking a wider stakeholder perspective will jeopardise the interest of its stockholders. However, our findings do suggest that the market is not only influenced by the independent CSR activities, but also the totality of these activities and that the facets that they value do vary over time. It seems that most recently, the market has valued most firms that satisfied minimum requirements in the areas of diversity and environmental protection but were most proactive in the area of employee-relations. (shrink)

Robert Cummins has recently used the program of Clark Hull to illustrate the effects of logical positivist epistemology upon psychological theory. On Cummins's account, Hull's theory is best understood as a functional analysis, rather than a nomological subsumption. Hull's commitment to the logical positivist view of explanation is said to have blinded him to this aspect of this theory, and thus restricted its scope. We will argue that this interpretation of Hull's epistemology, though common, is mistaken. Hull's epistemological views were (...) developed independently of, and in considerable contrast to, the principles of logical positivism. (shrink)

A recording or performance of a song is a cover if there is an earlier, canonical recording of the song. It can seem intuitive to think that properly appreciating a cover requires considering it in relation to the original, or at least that doing so will yield a deeper appreciation. This intuition is supported by some philosophical accounts of covers. And it is complicated by the possibility of hearing in, whereby one hears elements of the original version in the cover. (...) We argue that it can nevertheless be just as legitimate to consider a cover version on its own as it is to consider it in relation to the earlier recording that it is covering. In some cases, these two modes of appreciation will offer distinct rewards. In other cases, one mode will be substantially more rewarding than the other. The details matter, especially in complicated cases like covers of covers, but neither mode is privileged in principle. (shrink)

One approach to science treats science as a cognitive accomplishment of individuals and defines a scientific community as an aggregate of individual inquirers. Another treats science as a fundamentally collective endeavor and defines a scientist as a member of a scientific community. Distributed cognition has been offered as a framework that could be used to reconcile these two approaches. Adam Toon has recently asked if the cognitive and the social can be friends at last. He answers that they probably cannot, (...) posing objections to the would-be rapprochement. We clarify both the animosity and the tonic proposed to resolve it, ultimately arguing that worries raised by Toon and others are uncompelling. (shrink)

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more fact-oriented (...) and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

Mike Anderson1 has given us a thoughtful and useful field guide: Not in the genre of a bird-watcher’s guide which is carried in the field and which contains detailed descriptions of possible sightings, but in the sense of a guide to a field (in this case embodied cognition) which aims to identify that field’s general principles and properties. I’d like to make some comments that will hopefully complement Anderson’s work, highlighting points of agreement and disagreement between his view of the (...) field and my own, and acting as a devil’s advocate in places where further discussion seems to be required. Given the venue for this guide, we can safely restrict the discussion to embodied artificial intelligence (EAI), even if such work draws on notions of embodied cognition.. (shrink)

This book explores Dostoevsky as a political thinker from his religious and philosophical foundation to nineteenth-century European politics and how themes that he had examined are still relevant for us today.

Motivated by a desire to narrate and contextualize the deluge of "French theory," After the Deluege showcases recent work by today's brightest scholars of French intellectual history that historicizes key debates, figures, and turning points in the postwar era of French thought.

Described as one of the two fathers of medical law, Professor Peter Skegg has been a leading figure in the study of law and medicine. Over a 46 year academic career at the University of Auckland, University of Oxford, and the University of Otago, Professor Skegg has helped develop the field of medical law into a burgeoning academic discipline and has provided intellectual guardianship for the practice of law and medicine. This collection brings together contemporaries, colleagues, and former students of (...) Professor Skegg to celebrate his enduring contribution to the study of medical law. This edited collection contains twelve essays written by a range of internationally recognised medical lawyers. The topics cover the regulation of medical practitioners, consent, rights in bodily material, euthanasia, compensation and ethical approval for medical research, treatment orders for mental health conditions, and surrogacy laws. Whilst some of the essays return to territory that has been initially surveyed by Peter s research and analysis, others touch upon some wider medical law topics, illustrating Peter s lasting contribution to medical law as well as mapping out some of the new frontiers for the discipline of medical law. Academics, students and practitioners, from a range of jurisdictions, who are interested in how the law governs the provision of healthcare will benefit reading the various essays contained here. In addition, anyone who has had the good fortune of working with, or learning from, Professor Skegg will also enjoy the opportunity to return to the field of study that he founded. (shrink)

Many commentators suppose that the principles of Aristotle’s Politics are received from his theoretical works. Yet this way of understanding the Politics does not sufficiently appreciate Aristotle’s division of sciences, and it obscures the relevance of his political reflections for our time. We argue that Aristotle’s treatment of the polis and all it entails does not require his natural science and the principles of theoretical fields. Instead, despite wording that recalls theoretical treatises, Aristotle is careful to develop his political argumentation (...) without any such dependence. (shrink)

This article proposes a unified framework for understanding creative problem solving, namely, the explicit–implicit interaction theory. This new theory of creative problem solving constitutes an attempt at providing a more unified explanation of relevant phenomena (in part by reinterpreting/integrating various fragmentary existing theories of incubation and insight). The explicit–implicit interaction theory relies mainly on 5 basic principles, namely, (a) the coexistence of and the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge, (b) the simultaneous involvement of implicit and explicit processes in most (...) tasks, (c) the redundant representation of explicit and implicit knowledge, (d) the integration of the results of explicit and implicit processing, and (e) the iterative (and possibly bidirectional) processing. A computational implementation of the theory is developed based on the CLARION cognitive architecture and applied to the simulation of relevant human data. This work represents an initial step in the development of process-based theories of creativity encompassing incubation, insight, and various other related.. (shrink)

I discuss the attitude of Jewish law sources from the 2nd–:5th centuries to the imprecision of measurement. I review a problem that the Talmud refers to, somewhat obscurely, as impossible reduction. This problem arises when a legal rule specifies an object by referring to a maximized measurement function, e.g., when a rule applies to the largest part of a divided whole, or to the first incidence that occurs, etc. A problem that is often mentioned is whether there might be hypothetical (...) situations involving more than one maximal value of the relevant measurement and, given such situations, what is the pertinent legal rule. Presumption of simultaneous occurrences or equally measured values are also a source of embarrassment to modern legal systems, in situations exemplified in the paper, where law determines a preference based on measured values. I contend that the Talmudic sources discussing the problem of impossible reduction were guided by primitive insights compatible with fuzzy logic presentation of the inevitable uncertainty involved in measurement. I maintain that fuzzy models of data are compatible with a positivistic epistemology, which refuses to assume any precision in the extra-conscious world that may not be captured by observation and measurement. I therefore propose this view as the preferred interpretation of the Talmudic notion of impossible reduction. Attributing a fuzzy world view to the Talmudic authorities is meant not only to increase our understanding of the Talmud but, in so doing, also to demonstrate that fuzzy notions are entrenched in our practical reasoning. If Talmudic sages did indeed conceive the results of measurements in terms of fuzzy numbers, then equality between the results of measurements had to be more complicated than crisp equations. The problem of impossible reduction could lie in fuzzy sets with an empty core or whose membership functions were only partly congruent. Reduction is impossible may thus be reconstructed as there is no core to the intersection of two measures. I describe Dirichlet maps for fuzzy measurements of distance as a rough partition of the universe, where for any region A there may be a non-empty set of - _A, where the problem of impossible reduction applies. This model may easily be combined with probabilistic extention. The possibility of adopting practical decision standards based on -cuts is discussed in this context. I propose to characterize the uncertainty that was presumably capped by the old sages as U- uncertainty, defined, for a non-empty fuzzy set A on the set of real numbers, whose -cuts are intervals of real numbers, as U = 1/h 0 h log [1+]d, where h is the largest membership value obtained by any element of A and is the measure of the -cut of A defined by the Lebesge integral of its characteristic function. (shrink)

Subsequent to the crystallization of the legal schools, Muslim jurists felt the need to consolidate the massive corpus of legal opinion in order to aid students and practitioners of the law. The result was legal maxims, concise theoretical statements that captured the objectives of the Sharia. An example is al-ḍarar yuzāl, which is based on the hadith lā ḍarar wa-lā ḍirār. This article analyzes the role of legal maxims in Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī’s jurisprudence and fatwas, as found in his numerous books (...) and articles. Its preliminary assumption is that Qaraḍāwī uses legal maxims to control and systematize the use of considerations of public welfare, especially in the field of “the jurisprudence of reality”. Because this fiqh deals mainly with political topics on which there are hardly any guidelines in scripture, and stems therefore from mostly nontextual benefits, it is an area vulnerable to undisciplined use of utilitarian considerations by jurists. Legal maxims then come in handy when weighing the relevant benefit and harm related to each topic. (shrink)

A core question of contemporary social morality concerns how we ought to handle racial categorization. By this we mean, for instance, classifying or thinking of a person as Black, Korean, Latino, White, etc.² While it is widely FN:2 agreed that racial categorization played a crucial role in past racial oppression, there remains disagreement among philosophers and social theorists about the ideal role for racial categorization in future endeavors. At one extreme of this disagreement are short-term eliminativists who want to do (...) away with racial categorization relatively quickly (e.g. Appiah, 1995; D’Souza, 1996; Muir, 1993; Wasserstrom, 2001/1980; Webster, 1992; Zack, 1993, 2002), typically because they view it as mistaken and oppressive. At the opposite end of the spectrum, long-term conservationists hold that racial identities and communities are beneficial, and that racial categorization —suitably reformed —is essential to fostering them (e.g. Outlaw, 1990, 1995, 1996). While extreme forms of conservationism have fewer proponents in academia than the most radical eliminativist positions, many theorists advocate more moderate positions. In between the two poles, there are many who believe that racial categorization is valuable (and perhaps necessary) given the continued existence of racial inequality and the lingering effects of past racism (e.g. Haslanger, 2000; Mills, 1998; Root, 2000; Shelby, 2002, 2005; Sundstrom, 2002; Taylor, 2004; Young, 1989). Such authors agree on the short-term need for racial categorization in at least some domains, but they often differ with regard to its long-term value. (shrink)

I am grateful to Peter Achinstein, Don Howard, and the other participants at the conference, 'The Role of Experiments in Scientific Changer', Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 30 March to 1 April, 1990, for helpful discussion, and especially to Ron Laymon for his discussion comments presented at the conference on an earlier version of this paper.

Three of the articles included in this issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - Ron Amundson and Shari Tresky's "On a Bioethical Challenge to Disability Rights"; Rachel Cooper's "Can It Be a Good Thing to Be Deaf?"; and Mark T. Brown's "The Potential of the Human Embryo" - interact (in various ways) with the concepts of disability, humanity, and personhood and their normative dimensions. As one peruses these articles, it becomes apparent that terms like "disability," "human being," and (...) "person" carry with them great normative significance. There is, however, much disagreement concerning both the definition and the extension of such terms. This is significant because different terms and definitions are associated with different sets of normative requirements. In what follows we reconstruct the argument of each of the articles, and then offer some brief critical analysis intended to stimulate further thought about and discussion of the issues that each raises. (shrink)

Nozick's genetic supermarket has arrived on the wings of angels brought to us by Ron Harris, the founder of ronsangels.com. How should we respond to this and other options that will soon be beckoning? To assist us in answering these questions, I shall begin by considering a technique that has been with us for some time, but has the effect of changing the nature of children. Understanding the basis on which this technique can be supported may help us to grapple (...) with the more difficult question of what we should do about newer options that also change the nature of our children. It is not, however, my aim here to deal with all the objections that could be urged against these options. My purpose is the narrower one of developing a clear understanding of the central values at stake. (shrink)

The field of cognitive modeling has progressed beyond modeling cognition in the context of simple laboratory tasks and begun to attack the problem of modeling it in more complex, realistic environments, such as those studied by researchers in the field of human factors. The problems that the cognitive modeling community is tackling focus on modeling certain problems of communication and control that arise when integrating with the external environment factors such as implicit and explicit knowledge, emotion, cognition, and the cognitive (...) system. These problems must be solved in order to produce integrated cognitive models of moderately complex tasks. Architectures of cognition in these tasks focus on the control of a central system, which includes control of the central processor itself, initiation of functional processes, such as visual search and memory retrieval, and harvesting the results of these functional processes. Because the control of the central system is conceptually different from the internal control required by individual functional processes, a complete architecture of cognition must incorporate two types of theories of control: Type 1 theories of the structure, functionality, and operation of the controller, and type 2 theories of the internal control of functional processes, including how and what they communicate to the controller. This book presents the current state of the art for both types of theories, as well as contrasts among current approaches to human-performance models. It will be an important resource for professional and student researchers in cognitive science, cognitive-engineering, and human-factors.Contributors: Kevin A. Gluck, Jerry T. Ball, Michael A. Krusmark, Richard W. Pew, Chris R. Sims, Vladislav D. Veksler, John R. Anderson, Ron Sun, Nicholas L. Cassimatis, Randy J. Brou, Andrew D. Egerton, Stephanie M. Doane, Christopher W. Myers, Hansjorg Neth, Jeremy M Wolfe, Marc Pomplun, Ronald A. Rensink, Hansjorg Neth, Chris R. Sims, Peter M. Todd, Lael J. Schooler, Wai-Tat Fu, Michael C. Mozer, Sachiko Kinoshita, Michael Shettel, Alex Kirlik, Vladislav D. Veksler, Michael J. Schoelles, Jerome R. Busemeyer, Eric Dimperio, Ryan K. Jessup, Jonathan Gratch, Stacy Marsella, Glenn Gunzelmann, Kevin A. Gluck, Scott Price, Hans P. A. Van Dongen, David F. Dinges, Frank E. Ritter, Andrew L. Reifers, Laura Cousino Klein, Michael J. Schoelles, Eva Hudlicka, Hansjorg Neth, Christopher W. Myers, Dana Ballard, Nathan Sprague, Laurence T. Maloney, Julia Trommershauser, Michael S. Landy, A. Hornof, Michael J. Schoelles, David Kieras, Dario D. Salvucci, Niels Taatgen, Erik M. Altmann, Richard A. Carlson, Andrew Howes, Richard L. Lewis, Alonso Vera, Richard P. Cooper, and Michael D. Byrne. (shrink)

Ron Mallon explores how thinking and talking about kinds of person can bring those kinds into being. He considers what normative implications this social constructionism has for our understanding of our practices of representing human kinds, like race, gender, and sexual orientation, and for our own agency.

In this book Ron Amundson examines two hundred years of scientific views on the evolution-development relationship from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). This perspective challenges several popular views about the history of evolutionary thought by claiming that many earlier authors had made history come out right for the Evolutionary Synthesis. The book starts with a revised history of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought. It then investigates how development became irrelevant with the Evolutionary Synthesis. It concludes with an examination of the (...) contrasts that persist between mainstream evolutionary theory and evo-devo. This book will appeal to students and professionals in the philosophy and history of science, and biology. (shrink)

De dicto moral motivation is typically characterized by the agent’s conceiving of her goal in thin normative terms such as to do what is right. I argue that lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would put the agent in a bad position for responding in the morally-best manner in a certain type of situations. Two central features of the relevant type of situations are the appropriateness of the agent’s uncertainty concerning her underived moral values, and the practical, moral importance (...) of resolving this uncertainty. I argue that in some situations that are marked by these two features the most virtuous response is deciding to conduct a deep moral inquiry for a de dicto moral purpose. In such situations lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would amount to a moral shortcoming. I show the implications for Michael Smith’s argument against Motivational Judgment Externalism and for Brian Weatherson’s argument against avoiding moral recklessness: both arguments rely on a depreciating view of de dicto moral motivation, and both fail; or so I argue. (shrink)

In this book Ron Amundson examines two hundred years of scientific views on the evolution-development relationship from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology. This perspective challenges several popular views about the history of evolutionary thought by claiming that many earlier authors had made history come out right for the Evolutionary Synthesis. The book starts with a revised history of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought. It then investigates how development became irrelevant with the Evolutionary Synthesis. It concludes with an examination of the contrasts (...) that persist between mainstream evolutionary theory and evo-devo. This book will appeal to students and professionals in the philosophy and history of science, and biology. (shrink)

How should deontological theories that prohibit actions of type K — such as intentionally killing an innocent person — deal with cases of uncertainty as to whether a particular action is of type K? Frank Jackson and Michael Smith, who raise this problem in their paper "Absolutist Moral Theories and Uncertainty" (2006), focus on a case where a skier is about to cause the death of ten innocent people — we don’t know for sure whether on purpose or not — (...) by causing an avalanche; and we can only save the people by shooting the skier. One possible deontological attitude towards such uncertainty is what Jackson and Smith call the threshold view, according to which whether or not the deontological constraint applies depends on our degree of (justified) certainty meets a given threshold. Jackson and Smith argue against the threshold view that it leads to implausible paradoxical moral dilemmas in a special kind of case. In this response, we show that the threshold view can avoid these implausible moral dilemmas, as long as the relevant deontological constraint is grounded in individualistic patient-based considerations, such as what an individual person is entitled to object to. (shrink)

Recent work by Joshua Knobe has established that people are far more likely to describe bad but foreseen side effects as intentionally performed than good but foreseen side effects (this is sometimes called the 'Knobe effect' or the 'side-effect effect.' Edouard Machery has proposed a novel explanation for this asymmetry: it results from construing the bad side effect as a cost that must be incurred to receive a benefit. In this paper, I argue that Machery's 'trade-off hypothesis' is wrong. I (...) do this by reproducing the asymmetry between judgments about good and bad side effects in cases that cannot plausibly be construed as trade-offs. (shrink)

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 115, Issue 3pt3, Page 307-314, December 2015.

It is common in various quarters of philosophy to derive philosophically significant conclusions from theories of reference. In this paper, we argue that philosophers should give up on such 'arguments from reference.' Intuitions play a central role in establishing theories of reference, and recent cross-cultural work suggests that intuitions about reference vary across cultures and between individuals within a culture (Machery et al. 2004). We argue that accommodating this variation within a theory of reference undermines arguments from reference.

En ce moment propice aux débats sur la Constitution, la souveraineté du peuple, la démocratie directe, cet essai veut donner un aperçu historique, politique et philosophique du problème, à partir d'une seule idée directrice repensée dans la perspective de la "théorie mimétique" de René Girard : l'opposition établie par Giovanni Lobrano entre le "modèle ancien ou romain", seul vrai modèle républicain, et le "modèle moderne ou germano-anglais", d'origine féodale.

Recent work by Joshua Knobe has established that people are more likely to describe bad but foreseen side‐effects as intentionally performed than good but foreseen side‐effects (this is sometimes called the ‘Knobe effect’ or the ‘side‐effect effect’. Edouard Machery has proposed a novel explanation for this asymmetry: it results from construing the bad side‐effect as a cost that must be incurred to receive a benefit. In this paper, I argue that Machery’s ‘trade‐off hypothesis’ is wrong. I do this by reproducing (...) the asymmetry between judgments about good and bad side‐effects in cases that cannot plausibly be construed as trade‐offs. (shrink)

"The book is divided into 8-10 chapters that are each only 2 or 3 pages long... this feels like a nice feature of the book, since you can dip in and just read a short bite before moving on. The author clearly has some interesting ideas and at times I found his writing to be quite engaging." MAA Review "I did enjoy reading (and re-reading) this book very much. Reading it deserves a warm recommendation not only for mathematicians but for (...) anybody... this book makes you think about how and what you think you are thinking." European Mathematical Society "Circularity" is the story of a Janus-faced conceptual structure, that on the one hand led to deep scientific discoveries, and on the other hand is used to trick the mind into believing the impossible. Alongside mathematical revolutions that eventually led to the invention of the computer, the book describes ancient paradoxes that arise from circular thinking. Another aspect of circularity, its ability to entertain, leads to a surprising insight on the time old question "What is humor." The book presents the ubiquity of circularity in many fields, and its power to confuse and to instruct. (shrink)

Jennifer Rose Carr’s (2020) article “Normative Uncertainty Without Theories” proposes a method to maximize expected value under normative uncertainty without Intertheoretic Value Comparison (hereafter IVC). Carr argues that this method avoids IVC because it avoids theories: the agent’s credence is distributed among normative hypotheses of a particular type, which don’t constitute theories. However, I argue that Carr’s method doesn’t avoid or help to solve what I consider as the justificatory problem of IVC, which isn’t specific to comparing theories as such. (...) This threatens the implementability of Carr’s method. Fortunately, I also show how Carr’s method can nevertheless be implemented. I identify a type of epistemic states where the justificatory problem of IVC is not a necessary obstacle to maximizing expected value. In such states, the uncertainty stems from indecisive normative intuitions, and the agent justifiably constructs each normative hypothesis on the basis of a consistent subset of her intuitions by reference to the same unit of value. This part of my argument complements not only Carr’s (2020) argument, but also some moderate defenses of IVC. The combination of Carr’s paper and mine helps to illuminate the conditions for maximizing expected value under normative uncertainty without unjustified value comparison. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a flurry of work on the metaphysics of race. While it is now widely accepted that races do not share robust, bio-behavioral essences, opinions differ over what, if anything, race is. Recent work has been divided between three apparently quite different answers. A variety of theorists argue for racial skepticism, the view that races do not exist at all.[iv] A second group defends racial constructionism, holding that races are in some way socially constructed.[v],[vi] And (...) a third group maintains racial population naturalism, the view that races may exist as biologically salient populations albeit ones that do not have the biologically determined social significance once imputed to them.[vii] The three groups thus seem to disagree fundamentally upon the metaphysical character of race. (shrink)

Critiques of Neoclassical Economics extend, unsurprisingly, to its mathematical structure. The discussion has largely focused on General Equilibrium Theory (GET), a formalism developed by Leon Walras over a century ago. Internally consistent, but highly unrealistic, GET lacks predictive power, and has been a historical failure. As an alternative, this article proposes a methodology largely developed by Grabner et al. (2019), in which Agent-Based Models (ABMs) are linked with existing Equation-Based Models (EBMs) as a means of developing a more powerful formalism. (...) The approach is illustrated by application to the Arrow- Debreu (AD) model of Neoclassical theory, and the Kuznets Curve of Developmental Economics. Broader implications for the social and natural sciences are briefly considered. (shrink)

Economics is currently experiencing a climate of uncertainty regarding the soundness of its theoretical framework and even its status as a science. Much of the criticism is within the discipline, and emphasises the alleged failure of the neoclassical viewpoint. This article proposes the deployment of partial modelling, utilising Boolean networks (BNs), as an inductive discovery procedure for the development of economic theory. The method is presented in detail and then linked to the Semantic View of Theories (SVT), closely identified with (...) Bas van Fraassen and Patrick Suppes, in which models are construed as mediators creatively negotiating between theory and reality. It is suggested that this approach may be appropriate for economics and, by implication, for any science in which there is no consensus theory, and a wide range of viewpoints compete for acceptance. (shrink)

This exploratory study examines how managers and professionals regard the ethical and social responsibility reputations of 60 well-known Australian and International companies, and how this in turn influences their attitudes and behaviour towards these organisations. More than 350 MBA, other postgraduate business students, and participants in Australian Institute of Management (Western Australia) management education programmes were surveyed to evaluate how ethical and socially responsible they believed the 60 organisations to be. The survey sought to determine what these participants considered ‘ethical’ (...) and ‘socially responsible’ behaviour in organisations to be. The survey also examined how the participants’ beliefs influenced their attitudes and intended behaviours towards these organisations. The results of this survey indicate that many managers and professionals have clear views about the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies. This affects their attitudes towards these organisations which in turn has an impact on their intended behaviour towards them. These findings support the view in other research studies that well-educated managers and professionals are, to some extent, taking into account the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies when deciding whether to work for them, use their services or buy shares in their companies. (shrink)

Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue in 1981, tensions inherent to the relationship between morally educative practices and the institutions that house them have been widely noted. We propose a taxonomy of the ways in which the pursuit of external goods by institutions undermines the pursuit of the internal goods of practices. These comprise substitution, where the institution replaces the pursuit of one type of good by another; frustration, where opportunities for practitioners to discover goods or develop new (...) standards of excellence are frustrated by institutional priorities and resource allocation; and injustice, which undermines the integrity of relationships within the organization and/or with partners. These threats, though analytically distinct, are often mutually reinforcing. This conceptual contribution is illustrated both by the extant literature and by a novel context, the three-ring circus. (shrink)

This paper briefly summarizes current thinking in engineering ethics education, argues that much of that ethical instruction runs the risk of being only superficially effective, and explores some of the underlying systemic barriers within academia that contribute to this result. This is not to criticize or discourage efforts to improve ethics instruction. Rather it is to point to some more fundamental problems that still must be addressed in order to realize the full potential of enhanced ethics instruction. Issues discussed will (...) include: intellectual engagement versus emotional engagement; the gravitational pull of curricular structures; the nature of engineering faculty; and the “engineer-ization” of ethics. (shrink)

This exploratory study examines how managers and professionals regard the ethical and social responsibility reputations of 60 well-known Australian and International companies, and how this in turn influences their attitudes and behaviour towards these organisations. More than 350 MBA, other postgraduate business students, and participants in Australian Institute of Management management education programmes were surveyed to evaluate how ethical and socially responsible they believed the 60 organisations to be. The survey sought to determine what these participants considered 'ethical' and 'socially (...) responsible' behaviour in organisations to be. The survey also examined how the participants' beliefs influenced their attitudes and intended behaviours towards these organisations. The results of this survey indicate that many managers and professionals have clear views about the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies. This affects their attitudes towards these organisations which in turn has an impact on their intended behaviour towards them. These findings support the view in other research studies that well-educated managers and professionals are, to some extent, taking into account the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies when deciding whether to work for them, use their services or buy shares in their companies. (shrink)