There is a growing recognition of the central role of technology and knowledge management for market success of organizations. Little is empirically know, however, about this relationship. Drawing on the South African Innovation Survey, a unique dataset on innovative behavior of South African firms in manufacturing and services, this paper investigates the question to what extent and in which ways do technology and innovation management activities affect firms’ market position. Findings show that conducting technology strategy activities pays out. Moreover, especially (...) a combination of internal and external technology audits seems to be beneficial for organizational performance. (shrink)

Even though disquotationalism is not correct as it is usually formulated, a deep insight lies behind it. Specifically, it can be argued that, modulo implicit commitment to reflection principles, all there is to the notion of truth is given by a simple, natural collection of truth-biconditionals.

There have been few empirical studies into what non-medical factors influence physicians and nurses when deciding about admission and discharge of ICU patients. Information about the attitudes of healthcare professionals about this process can be used to improve decision-making about resource allocation in intensive care. To provide insight into ethical problems that influence the ICU admission and discharge process, we aimed to identify and explore ethical dilemmas healthcare professionals are faced with.

While Gabriel Watts and Ainsley Newson argue that diagnostic laboratories do not have a general duty to routinely reinterpret genomic variant classifications, they do formulate several restricted duties to actively reinterpret specific types of classifications.1 They place these duties with laboratories, acknowledging that they are setting aside any responsibilities that might arise for clinicians. Here, we will discuss the implications of this obligation for clinicians and the moral tension it may confront them with. We focus in particular on the consequences (...) of the proposed moral obligation to actively reinterpret variant classifications that carry a higher risk of being false positives. Such reclassification is likely to result in ‘downgrades’: previously pathogenic variants (pathogenic/likely pathogenic, P/LP) reclassified to benign (likely benign/benign, LB/B) or uncertain variants (variant of uncertain significance, VUS). Any laboratory policy to actively reinterpret (specific sets of) classifications will confront the clinician with the question whether the person tested should be recontacted on a reinterpretation of previously reported results. As others have pointed out, recontacting in general comes with challenges, since patients may not want to be recontacted or have forgotten about their genetic test.2 3 Recontacting in case of a downgrade, however, is particularly impactful. Previous studies on the psychosocial impact of reclassification on patients …. (shrink)

We are walking too quickly down the road to physical and psychological utopia without pausing to assess the potential damage to our humanity from this brave new ...

In addition to its interest as one of Plato's most brilliant dramatic masterpieces, the Protagoras presents a vivid picture of the crisis of fifth-century Greek thought, in which traditional values and conceptions of man were subjected on the one hand to the criticism of the Sophists and on the other to the far more radical criticism of Socrates. The dialogue deals with many themes which are central to the ethical theories which Plato developed under the influence of Socrates, notably the (...) nature of human excellence, the relation of knowledge to right conduct, and the place of pleasure in the good life. This translation of the Protagoras was originally published in 1976. In this revised edition, C. C. W. Taylor has made a number of changes in the translation and commentary, and has added a new Preface and Introduction. The Bibliography has also been extended to include titles published up to 1990. (shrink)

Newborn screening involves a complex logistical process, which depends on the close cooperation of many professionals, such as midwives, laboratory technicians, general practitioners and pediatricians. These professionals may encounter moral problems in the process, which have not been systematically studied before. This study fills this gap. We conducted interviews with 36 professionals involved in NBS in the Netherlands and made an inventory of the moral problems they encounter, as well as of the ways in which they tend to respond to (...) them. The moral problems professionals encounter stem from interpersonal conflicts and intrapersonal conflicts. Given the complexity of the work of NBS professionals, the study suggests that the moral problems that occur on the work floor cannot easily be solved by means of offering better or more stringent policy guidelines. Rather, it should be appreciated that professionals contribute significantly to shaping the morality of NBS with the help of their daily choices, and they should be supported in carrying out this task—for example with the help of a moral training or regular multidisciplinary moral deliberation, facilitated by an ethicist. (shrink)

Professor Pompa's study of Vico has done a great deal to stimulate and inform the growing interest in the English-speaking world in this remarkable figure. It remains the only work devoted almost exclusively to an interpretation of the New Science and offers a comprehensive guide to the main theoretical problems to which the text gives rise. For this second edition Professor Pompa has responded to the reactions of reviewers and critics and added a new chapter which analyses Vico's conception of (...) the principles which govern the development of law. (shrink)

Volume I provides a detailed analysis of cylindric algebras, starting with a formulation of their axioms and a development of their elementary properties, and proceeding to a deeper study of their interrelationships by means of general algebraic notions such as subalgebras, homomorphisms, direct products, free algebras, reducts and relativized algebras.

Phenomenal Difference' grants new attention to contemporary black British art, exploring its critical and social significance through attention to embodied experience, affectivity, the senses and perception. Much before scholars in the arts and humanities took their recent 'ontological turn' toward the new materialism, black British art had begun to expose cultural criticism's overreliance on the concepts of textuality, representation, identity and difference. Illuminating that original field of aesthetics and creativity, this book shows how black British artworks themselves can become the (...) basis for an engaged and widely-reaching philosophy. (shrink)

Wilson and Kass talked about their book, The ethics of human cloning, which is about the ethical debate over human cloning.

Newborn screening involves the collection of blood from the heel of a newborn baby and testing it for a list of rare and inheritable disorders. New biochemical screening technologies led to expansions of NBS programs in the first decade of the 21st century. It is expected that they will in time be replaced by genetic sequencing technologies. These developments have raised a lot of ethical debate. We reviewed the ethical literature on NBS, analyzed the issues and values that emerged, and (...) paid particular interest to the type of impacts authors think NBS should have on the lives of children and their families. Our review shows that most authors keep their ethical reflection confined to policy decisions, about for instance the purpose of the program, and its voluntary or mandatory nature. While some authors show appreciation of how NBS information empowers parents to care for their children, most authors consider these aspects to be ‘private’ and leave their evaluation up to parents themselves. While this division of moral labor fits with the liberal conviction to leave individuals free to decide how they want to live their private lives, it also silences the ethical debate about these issues. Given the present and future capacity of NBS to offer an abundance of health-related information, we argue that there is good reason to develop a more substantive perspective to whether and how NBS can contribute to parents’ good care for children. (shrink)

The work of mathematician and logician Alfred Tarski (1901--1983) marks the transition from substantial to deflationary views about truth.

Prior studies in business ethics highlight the role of philanthropy in shaping stakeholders’ perceptions of a firm’s underlying moral tendencies and values. Scholars argue that philanthropy-based character inferences influence whether and how stakeholders engage with firms. We extend this line of reasoning to examine the impact of philanthropy on firms’ contracting costs in the capital market. We posit that philanthropy-based character inferences reduce investors’ agency concerns, thereby reducing firms’ cost of capital. We also posit that the strength of the philanthropy–cost (...) of capital relationship is contingent on uncertainty regarding a firm’s character, visibility of a firm, and prevailing philanthropic norms. We test and find support for our arguments in a longitudinal study of philanthropy and the cost of capital. Our findings have implications for business ethics research on corporate philanthropy and corporate social performance and for organizational research on social judgment. (shrink)

ArgumentIt seems theoretically convenient to construe knowledge practices in financial markets and organizations as “applied economics.” Alternatively or additionally, one might argue that practitioners draw on economic knowledge in order to systematically orient their actions towards profit-maximization; models, then, are understood as devices that make calculative rationality possible. However, empirical studies do not entirely confirm these theoretical positions: Practitioners’ actual calculations are often not “framed” by models; organizations and institutions influence the choice and adoption of models; and different professional groups (...) in financial markets have diverging attitudes towards model calculations. In order to account for this diversity, this article proposes the concept ofcultures of economic and financial expertise; the concept focuses on the patterns of knowledge practices and knowledge-related self-definitions of groups within financial organizations and markets; it also facilitates an analysis of the relations between and, more specifically, the hierarchies among different practices and identities. The article then goes on to explore the process of foreign exchange forecasting in a particular bank. The description immediately reveals that two groups are involved in this process: economists and analysts. These groups maintain quite different practices and self-descriptions in relation to models: While the economists in the bank use the models as organizational resources for consistent forecasting procedures and observe data with the help of simple model structures, analysts approach model forecasts from the perspective of critics: They see limits in the variable-centered, as opposed to a “thematic” approach and they disregard a model's imposed temporality. Nevertheless, analysts use model forecasts as anchors for developing their own “paths” and stories about possible future expectation changes in the markets. The specific division of labor between economists and analysts, and specifically the dominant role of analysts in the forecasting process, fit into a larger picture: The rise of institutional investors in the foreign exchange markets and their demand for genuine market knowledge for speculative investment projects has contributed to the rise and dominance of analysts’ culture. (shrink)

The Hungry Soul is a fascinating exploration of the natural and cultural act of eating. Kass brilliantly reveals how the various aspects of this phenomenon, and the customs, rituals, and taboos surrounding it, relate to universal and profound truths about the human animal and its deepest yearnings. "Kass is a distinguished and graceful writer. . . . It is astonishing to discover how different is our world from that of the animals, even in that which most evidently betrays that we (...) too are animals--our need and desire for food."--Roger Scruton, Times Literary Supplement "Yum."--Miss Manners. (shrink)

We formulate and explore two basic axiomatic systems of type-free subjective probability. One of them explicates a notion of finitely additive probability. The other explicates a concept of infinitely additive probability. It is argued that the first of these systems is a suitable background theory for formally investigating controversial principles about type-free subjective probability.

In their 2007 paper, Swierstra and Rip identify characteristic tropes and patterns of moral argumentation in the debate about the ethics of new and emerging science and technologies (or “NEST-ethics”). Taking their NEST-ethics structure as a starting point, we considered the debate about tissue engineering (TE), and argue what aspects we think ought to be a part of a rich and high-quality debate of TE. The debate surrounding TE seems to be predominantly a debate among experts. When considering the NEST-ethics (...) arguments that deal directly with technology, we can generally conclude that consequentialist arguments are by far the most prominently featured in discussions of TE. In addition, many papers discuss principles, rights and duties relevant to aspects of TE, both in a positive and in a critical sense. Justice arguments are only sporadically made, some “good life” arguments are used, others less so (such as the explicit articulation of perceived limits, or the technology as a technological fix for a social problem). Missing topics in the discussion, at least from the perspective of NEST-ethics, are second “level” arguments—those referring to techno-moral change connected to tissue engineering. Currently, the discussion about tissue engineering mostly focuses on its so-called “hard impacts”—quantifiable risks and benefits of the technology. Its “soft impacts”—effects that cannot easily be quantified, such as changes to experience, habits and perceptions, should receive more attention. (shrink)

In their 2007 paper, Swierstra and Rip identify characteristic tropes and patterns of moral argumentation in the debate about the ethics of new and emerging science and technologies (or “NEST-ethics”). Taking their NEST-ethics structure as a starting point, we considered the debate about tissue engineering (TE), and argue what aspects we think ought to be a part of a rich and high-quality debate of TE. The debate surrounding TE seems to be predominantly a debate among experts. When considering the NEST-ethics (...) arguments that deal directly with technology, we can generally conclude that consequentialist arguments are by far the most prominently featured in discussions of TE. In addition, many papers discuss principles, rights and duties relevant to aspects of TE, both in a positive and in a critical sense. Justice arguments are only sporadically made, some “good life” arguments are used, others less so (such as the explicit articulation of perceived limits, or the technology as a technological fix for a social problem). Missing topics in the discussion, at least from the perspective of NEST-ethics, are second “level” arguments—those referring to techno-moral change connected to tissue engineering. Currently, the discussion about tissue engineering mostly focuses on its so-called “hard impacts”—quantifiable risks and benefits of the technology. Its “soft impacts”—effects that cannot easily be quantified, such as changes to experience, habits and perceptions, should receive more attention. (shrink)

What does woman mean? According to two competing views, it can be seen as a sex term or as a gender term. Recently, Jennifer Saul has put forward a contextualist view, according to which woman can have different meanings in different contexts. The main motivation for this view seems to involve moral and political considerations, namely, that this view can do justice to the claims of trans women. Unfortunately, Saul argues, on further reflection the contextualist view fails to do justice (...) to those moral and political claims that motivated the view in the first place. In this article I argue that there is a version of the contextualist view that can indeed capture those moral and political aims, and in addition, I use this case to illustrate an important and more general claim, namely, that moral and political considerations can be relevant to the descriptive project of finding out what certain politically significant terms actually mean. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the question of what it means to say that a property is socially constructed. I focus on an influential project that many social constructivists are engaged in, namely, arguing against the inevitability of a trait, and I examine several recent characterizations of social construction, with the aim of assessing which one is more suited to the task.

THEIR MORALS AND OURS By Leon Trotsky MORAL EFFLUVIA During an epoch of triumphant reaction, Messrs. Democrats, Social-Democrats, Anarchists, ...

: For many reasons, and more than its predecessors, the President's Council on Bioethics has been the subject of much public attention and heated controversy. But little of that attention and controversy has been informed by knowledge of the Council's mission, its ways of working, and, most importantly, its actual work. This essay describes the Council's mission, discusses its public ways of working, and reviews the five major works produced during the Council's first term. In all its activities, the Council (...) has sought to develop a richer bioethics, one that recognizes and tries to do justice to the deep issues of our humanity raised by the age of biotechnology. Believing that these issues are properly matters to be discussed and governed by the polity as a whole, the Council also has sought to contribute to a genuinely public or political bioethics, beyond the rule of "experts," scientific and bioethical. (shrink)

This book presents a study of the nature and conditions of historical knowledge, conducted through a study of the relevant theories of Hume, Hegel and Vico. It is usually thought that in order to establish historical facts, we have to have a theory of human nature to support our arguments. Hume, Hegel and Vico all subscribed to this view, and are therefore discussed in detail. Professor Pompa goes on to argue that there is in fact no way of discovering anything (...) about human nature except through historical investigation. It is necessary therefore to find a different way of thinking about how we discover historical facts. This is done in the last chapter where, in opposition to almost all present views, it is argued that we must have a framework of inherited knowledge before we can believe in anything which results from historical enquiry. (shrink)

The Structure of the ' Scienza Nuova ' One of the main reasons for the failure of Vico's Scienza Nuova to establish itself as a widely read philosophical ...

In this article, the prospects of deflationism about the concept of truth are investigated. A new version of deflationism, called inferential deflationism, is articulated and defended. It is argued that it avoids the pitfalls of earlier deflationist views such as Horwich’s minimalist theory of truth and Field’s version of deflationism.

Telic monism in logic is the thesis that there is one single philosophically primary goal to logic. A different way to put it is that there is only one canonical application to logic. This thesis is widely present—implicitly or more explicitly—in the literature on the philosophy of logic, yet has not been examined nor argued for extensively. In this paper I will present and critically examine telic monism. One prominent candidate for the canonical application of logic, namely the formal codification (...) of logical consequence in natural language, will be challenged directly. The critique will then be generalized by appealing to a practice-based philosophy of logic. The general argument I put forth here claims that we have no principled reason to assume there to be just one primary goal to logic. Rather, I claim that it is more plausible that there actually is a variety of goals, purposes and applications to logic, without one of them enjoying primacy over the others. If this argument succeeds, at least one of the consequences is that it allows for a kind of logical pluralism that has previously been deemed insignificant, namely logical instrumentalism. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of mood on corporate philanthropic giving. Drawing on group emotions theory and affect-infused decision theory, we advance the argument that firms allocate greater resources to philanthropy when headquarters-based employees are in a more positive affective state. We also describe three boundary conditions in this relationship—executives’ embeddedness in the firm, executives’ latitude to engage in philanthropic giving, and the firm’s track record of corporate social irresponsibility. We test our arguments using a longitudinal dataset of philanthropic giving (...) by U.S. firms. Our study contributes to the literature by shedding light on the role of affect in shaping the decision to allocate resources to corporate philanthropy. (shrink)

The logician Kurt Godel in 1951 established a disjunctive thesis about the scope and limits of mathematical knowledge: either the mathematical mind is equivalent to a Turing machine (i.e., a computer), or there are absolutely undecidable mathematical problems. In the second half of the twentieth century, attempts have been made to arrive at a stronger conclusion. In particular, arguments have been produced by the philosopher J.R. Lucas and by the physicist and mathematician Roger Penrose that intend to show that the (...) mathematical mind is more powerful than any computer. These arguments, and counterarguments to them, have not convinced the logical and philosophical community. The reason for this is an insufficiency if rigour in the debate. The contributions in this volume move the debate forward by formulating rigorous frameworks and formally spelling out and evaluating arguments that bear on Godel's disjunction in these frameworks. The contributions in this volume have been written by world leading experts in the field. (shrink)

Women are underrepresented in the upper echelons of management in most countries. Despite the effectiveness of identity conscious initiatives for increasing the proportion of women, many organizations have been reluctant to implement such initiatives because potential employees may perceive them negatively. Given the increasing competition for labor, attracting talent is relevant for the long-term success of organizations. In this study, we used an experimental design to examine the effects of identity blind and identity conscious gender diversity initiatives on people’s pursuit (...) intentions toward organizations using them. We used counterfactual thinking, derived from fairness theory, as a guiding framework for our hypothesis development and investigated the moderating influence of a forthcoming government-mandated gender quota as well as individual characteristics. Participants reviewed statements regarding workplace diversity initiatives and rated either the initiatives’ effectiveness or indicated their intentions to pursue employment with organizations using them. Of those rating pursuit intentions, half were informed that the country in which they were conducting their job search was about to implement gender quotas. Results indicated a diversity management paradox such that initiatives perceived as more effective made organizations using them less attractive as employers. However, these negative perceptions were mitigated by a government-mandated quota, and also lower among women. Implications for the study and practice of diversity are discussed. (shrink)

It’s constitutive of classical theism that there is a necessarily existent personal god who is also the creator of the universe, where the latter claim includes at least the following three theses: (i) God is wholly distinct from the natural world; (ii) God is the originating or sustaining cause of the natural world; and (iii) God created the natural world ex nihilo, i.e., without the use of pre-existing materials. Call this tripartite component of classical theism the classical view of creation. (...) In this paper, I offer a new argument against classical theism. In particular, I argue that creation ex nihilo is prima facie impossible, and that since the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is constitutive of classical theism, classical theism is false. (shrink)