In this article, we extend the research on the public interest to non-audit engagements performed by accounting firms and public accountants. Our thesis is that non-audit engagements, as private goods, require a distinct approach to the public interest than auditing. We suggest that a public value perspective can be used conceptually to provide substantial criteria for designing non-audit engagements conducive to public value creation and greater accountability. We illustrate the applicability and consequences of a public value perspective by analyzing and (...) contrasting the decision of two judicial opinions deciding whether Deloitte and the lead partner of a consulting engagement failed to act in the public interest in engineering the sale of collapsed British carmaker MG Rover. We advocate for a significant change in ethical codes of conduct by defining public interest obligations, not only in terms of professional attributes, but also in terms of outcomes. Our approach also suggests a requirement regarding planning a non-audit engagement, including establishing a public value proposition detailing the planned nature of the engagement, and extent of the assessment of the intended public value creation. We discuss the aspirational function of codes of conduct to provide accountability other than in terms of technical output, and to maintain the legitimacy and purpose of the profession. (shrink)

This selection consists of extracts from writings of women concerned solely with the pursuit of abstract ideas, historically contextualized. The texts, for the most part, reflect issues widely debated in their contemporary societies. Extracts from lesser-known writers are also included, providing a diversity of arguments spanning four centuries and including some notable contemporary philosophers.

Machiavélique. Un frisson saisit l'assistance, qui espère quelque diablerie. Jamais épithète n'a été utilisée plus à contresens du nom dont elle dérive... "...Quand Christian Soleil m'a proposé de préfacer Sur les traces de Machiavel, j'ai accepté très volontiers, car le sujet, dans le monde tourneboulé d'aujourd'hui, est d'une actualité brûlante et l'écriture, comme toujours, jaillissante et dense. Me voilà donc en situation de commenter le bras de fer entre un personnage de légende, difficile à débusquer de son trou et (...) plus difficile encore à confesser, et son poursuivant, notre auteur, l'œil pétillant, la plume déliée......"De l'embarras de démêler le vrai de l'apparence et le bonheur des peuples de l'asservissement". Il ne s'agit pas d'un inédit soudain découvert de l'auteur des Discours, seulement des interrogations du lecteur au sortir d'un tête-à-tête avec Machiavel, dont Christian Soleil, avec une maîtrise éprouvée, a été l'animateur inspiré et diligent. La rencontre a-t-elle été fructueuse? Il me semble. Le compte-rendu de celle-ci, sous la forme d'une biographie commentée, répond à une curiosité conséquente à un long pèlerinage en milieu trouble, non en la satisfaisant, mais en l'excitant davantage. Car il est dans le rôle de l'écrivain de susciter des interrogations et des résistances plutôt que de livrer un produit à consommer en l'état. Naviguant sur un fleuve dont les eaux tumultueuses sont semées d'écueils, Christian Soleil a écrit un livre qui marquera à la fois par une recherche poussée et méthodique, une construction intellectuelle très élaborée, une langue familière et noble. Concernant la vraie nature de son héros, le doute subsiste. Et c'est bien ainsi... " Michel Durafour. (shrink)

A leader in the modern commentary on ethics and philosophy, Mary Warnock casts a critical eye over her life and times.

How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. She discusses "joyful revolt" with Julia Kristeva, the idea of "the rest of the world" with Gayatri Spivak, the "art of living" with Michel Serres, the "carnival of the senses" with Michael Taussig, the relation of hope to passion and to politics with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau. (...) A dozen stimulating minds weigh in with their visions of a better social and political order. The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change. (shrink)

All religion and much philosophy has been concerned with the contrast between the ephemeral and the eternal. Human beings have always sought ways to overcome time, and to prove that death is not the end. This book consists then in an exploration of certain closely related ideas: personal identity, time, history and our commitment to the future, and the role of imagination in life.

Fundamental principles : the nature of the dispute -- Types of euthanasia -- Psychiatric assisted suicide -- Neonates -- Incompetent adults -- Human life is sacred -- The slippery slope -- Medical views -- Four methods of easing death and their effect on doctors -- Looking further ahead.

The works of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) ranged from the early _Thoughts on the Education of Daughters_ to _The Female Reader_, a selection of texts for girls, and included two novels. But her reputation is founded on _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ of 1792. This treatise is the first great document of feminism—and is now accepted as a core text in western tradition. It is not widely known that the germ of Wollstonecraft’s great work came out of an earlier (...) and much shorter vindication—A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), written in the context of the issues raised by the French Revolution. This edition, which follows the model of other Broadview Editions in including a range of materials that help the reader to see the work in the context of its era out of which it emerged, is arranged chronologically, opening with Wollstonecraft’s “other vindication.” It also includes a wide range of other documents in appendices, as well as a comprehensive and authoritative introduction, chronology, and full index. (shrink)

History and Systems of Psychology provides an engaging introduction to the rich story of psychology's past. Retaining the clarity and accessibility praised by readers of earlier editions, this classic textbook provides a chronological history of psychology from the pre-Socratic Greeks to contemporary systems, research, and applications. The new edition also features expanded coverage of Eastern as well as Western traditions, influential women in psychology, professional psychology in clinical, educational, and social settings, and new directions in twenty-first century psychology as a (...) cognitive and a positive science. Assuming little prerequisite knowledge, the authors discuss the people, places, and concepts that have shaped psychology's story, and show that we remain fascinated by the same enduring questions that confronted our ancestors - namely, our wonder at our subjectivity and consciousness of self. The seventh edition is fully supported by robust pedagogical features, instructor resources, and a companion website to aid student learning. (shrink)

Nature and Mortality is a challenging look at some of the major public issues of our time through the eyes of one of our most influential and probing liberal humanists. It is a frank account on where we stand today on such controversial matters as human embryology, genetic engineering, euthanasia and abortion. Warnock's views may seem like a red rag to a bull to some, but her contribution to the debate is always stimulating. Enlivened by autobiographical anecdote and some delicious (...) side-swipes, Nature and Mortality is Mary Warnock at her most perceptive, wise and entertaining. (shrink)

This chapter first distinguishes between originality and creativity. True originality is rare, whether in art, science, or LEGO, because to be truly original means to have done something that no one has ever done before, and that no one could have anticipated. Most LEGO creations will not meet that condition, for with the exception of serious hobbyists who undertake massive builds, most players who make original creations are making creations that are commonplace. Painting or remolding or placing stickers on the (...) bricks counts against the spirit of LEGO creation. The chapter then discusses The LEGO Movie embodies the paradox that presents three conflicting models of creative LEGO play, illustrated by the Master Builders, Finn's father, and Emmet. The movie's creators were deliberately playing around with conflicting popular conceptions of creativity: creativity as madness, creativity as thinking outside the box, and creativity as vision. (shrink)

The unity of aesthetic and teleological judgment, the third and earlier Critiques, is based on Kant′s discovery of a “heuristic method” for applying judgments regarding sense phenomena to abstract thought, a “second attention” which enables an “idea of the whole”. Synthetic judgment, basis for cognition and human action, depends on efficacy of non-empirical insights: the transcendental standpoint, “regulative” ideas, consciousness of “ought” and the reality of freedom, universality of natural mechanism, the principle of “fortuitous” purposiveness. The activity of reflective judgment (...) in the encounter with the beautiful, sublime, living, and two paradigmatic types of explanation, inspired by Spinoza′s distinction of extensio and cogitatio, permit Kant to bridge the gap between freedom and necessity, theoretical knowledge and morality. (shrink)

Using the matching bias example, the aim of the present studies was to show that adults' reasoning biases are due to faulty executive inhibition programming. In the first study, the subjects were trained on Wason's classical card selection task; half were given training in how to inhibit the perceptual matching bias (experimental group) and half in logic without the inhibition component (control group). On the pre- and post-tests, their performance was assessed on the Evans conditional rule falsification task (with a (...) negation in the antecedent of the rule), a task that also involves matching bias. In addition, subjects were tested for perceptual field dependence/independence using the Embedded Figures Test. The results brought out a specific inhibition training effect, as well as a clear-cut relationship in the experimental group between receptiveness to training and perceptual field independence. In the second study, the training paradigm was the same except that on the pre- and post-tests, the negation was in the consequent of the conditional rule (in this case, the perceptual matching response corresponds to the logical response). The subjects succeeded on the pre-test, and the matching-bias inhibition training had a negative effect on post-test performance. This specific negative priming effect confirms the inhibitory impact of our experimental training and outlines the dissociation of inhibition and logical components. (shrink)

La figure et l’œuvre de Françoise d’Aubigné, veuve Scarron et marquise de Maintenon, se sont trouvées longtemps prisonnières des mythes qu’ont inspirés dès le xviie siècle la vie romanesque et le destin exceptionnel de l’épouse morganatique du Roi-Soleil. La Palatine, Saint-Simon, Michelet ont bâti la légende noire, les Dames de Saint-Louis, Mme de Caylus et Mlle d’Aumale, puis La Beaumelle en ont édifié l’hagiographie, Voltaire et Sainte-Beuve tracé des portraits plus nuancés, mais insuffisa...

As stated by Jean-Pierre Changeux (2004) in his last book, The Physiology of Truth , objective knowledge does exist, and our brains are naturally equipped to recognise it. The results presented here provide the first insights on (1) the cerebral basis of reasoning errors, and (2) the neurocognitive dynamics that lead the human brain towards logical truth. We propose to call this new approach “neuropedagogy of reasoning”.

I challenge two points in Cohen Kadosh & Walsh's (CK & W) argument: First, the definition of abstraction is too restricted; second, the distinction between representations and operations is too clear-cut. For example, taking Jean Piaget's I propose that another way to avoid orthodoxy in the field of numerical cognition is to consider inhibition as an alternative idea of abstraction.

I challenge here the concept of SOC in regard to the question of the consciousness or unconsciousness of logical errors. My commentary offers support for the demonstration of how neuroimaging techniques might be used in the psychology of reasoning to test hypotheses about a potential hierarchy of levels of consciousness (and thus of partial unconsciousness) implemented in different brain networks.

La nécessité, en milieu académique, de toujours transcrire aussi complètement et systématiquement que possible les détails bibliographiques des travaux d'un auteur ou des ouvrages se rapportant à lui n'est pas à démontrer. Comment donc soutenir qu'on puisse omettre le nom des maisons d'édition? Le choix d'un éditeur, par un auteur, est aussi important que le choix d'un titre. Et pour le lecteur, c'est une circonstance qui donne à penser! Dans la littérature teilhardienne il existe en effet des cas qui donnent (...) beaucoup à penser. Avant de présenter un répertoire sommaire des bibliographies, biographies et lexiques teilhardiens, nous voudrions attirer l'attention sur le problème de valeur sémantique soulevé par l'existence de deux éditions anglaises d'une même traduction du Milieu Divin. Car les expressions sémantiques, tout autant que les idées, ont leurs conséquences. (shrink)

For ecofeminists within academic contexts, the classroom is another "contested terrain "where transformative eco-cultural work should be integrated. In our case, we are a part of communication studies and try to adopt ecofeminist insight as a position for questioning dominant discourses and practices. To do this, we "incorporate popular culture as a serious object of politics and analysis" (Giroux 1997, 148). It is our hope that popular culture can be used as an ecofeminist tool for interrupting hegemonic power relations and (...) encouraging critical-relational consciousness. This paper reports an exploratory effort aimed at combining ecofeminist critiques with popular culture to employ an ecofeminist pedagogy. It begins with an ecofeminist critique of the "animal-industrial-complex" (Noske 1989). In this critique, discursive moral agents are situated within the anthropocentric and androcentric culture (Payne 1994). It then articulates an ecofeminist teaching philosophy and describes how that philosophy was applied in one case using an episode from a prime time television cartoon. Finally, it draws conclusions about what is accomplished through this exploratory case. (shrink)

Intuitive predictions and judgements under uncertainty are often mediated by judgemental heuristics that sometimes lead to biases. Our micro-developmental study suggests that a presumption of rationality is justified for adult subjects, in so far as their systematic judgemental biases appear to be due to a specific executive-inhibition failure in working memory, and not necessarily to a lack of understanding of the fundamental principles of probability. This hypothesis was tested using an experimental procedure in which 60 adult subjects were trained to (...) inhibit the classical conjunction bias on a frequency judgement task derived from Tversky and Kahneman's work. Pre- and post-test performance was assessed via a probability judgement task. The data indicated a training effect, suggesting that subjects traditionally labelled as "irrational" with respect to the classical rules of inductive reasoning are in fact "inefficient inhibitors". These findings are discussed in terms of a polymorphous view of rationality. (shrink)

Known as the “Mother of Tibetan Buddhism” and the “Mother of Knowledge,” Yeshe Tsogyal built upon indigenous Bön philosophy and Mahāyāna Buddhism to bring about a Buddhism that is identifiably Tibetan. I report on her life, her works and teaching. Then summarize her significance as a philosopher of Tibetan Buddhist metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Lastly, I append portions of several writings attributed to her.

Recently, concerns have been raised about the phenomenon of 'overdiagnosis', the diagnosis of a condition that is not causing harm, and will not come to cause harm. Along with practical, ethical, and scientific questions, overdiagnosis raises questions about our concept of disease. In this paper, we analyse overdiagnosis as an epistemic problem and show how it challenges many existing accounts of disease. In particular, it raises questions about conceptual links drawn between disease and dysfunction, harm, and risk. We argue that (...) "disease" should be considered a vague concept with a nonclassical structure. On this view, overdiagnosed cases are 'borderline' cases of disease, falling in the zone between cases that are clearly disease, and cases that are clearly not disease. We then develop a précising definition of disease designed to provide practical help in preventing and limiting overdiagnosis. We argue that for this purpose, we can define disease as dysfunction that has a significant risk of causing severe harm to the patient. (shrink)

Neil Levy argues that while addicts who believe they are not addicts are self-deceived, addicts who believe they are addicts are just as self-deceived. Such persons accept a false belief that their addictive behaviour involves a loss of control. This paper examines two implications of Levy's discussion: that accurate self-knowledge may be particularly difficult for addicts; and that an addict's self-deceived belief that they cannot control themselves may aid their attempts at self-control. I argue that the self-deceived beliefs of addicts (...) in denial and of self-described addicts differ in kind. Unlike the self-deception of an addict in denial, that of the self-described addict allows them to acknowledge their behaviour. As such, it may aid an addict to develop more self-control. A paradoxical implication is that this self-deception may allow an addict more self-knowledge. (shrink)

Mary Anne Warren investigates a theoretical question that is at the centre of practical and professional ethics: what are the criteria for having moral status? That is: what does it take to be an entity towards which people have moral considerations? Warren argues that no single property will do as a sole criterion, and puts forward seven basic principles which establish moral status. She then applies these principles to three controversial moral issues: voluntary euthanasia, abortion, and the status of non-human (...) animals. (shrink)

Bathos - remarque -- Pt. 1. Le champ de bataille -- Pt. 2. Kant et ses juges -- Pt. 3. Traité de bathologie.

First published in 1984, Cultural Analysis is a systematic examination of the theories of culture contained in the writings of four contemporary social theorists: Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. This study of their work clarifies their contributions to the analysis of culture and shows the converging assumptions that the authors believe are laying the foundation for a new approach to the study of culture. The focus is specifically on culture, a concept that remains subject to (...) ambiguities of treatment, and concentrates on questions concerning the definition and content of culture, its construction, its relations with social conditions, and the manner in which it may be changing. The books demonstrates how these writers have made strides towards defining culture as an objective element of social interaction which can be subjected to critical investigation. (shrink)

Three Canadian institutional animal care and use committees were observed over a 1-year period to investigate animal ethical evaluation. While each protocol was evaluated, the observer collected information about the final decision, the type of protocol, and the category of invasiveness. The observer also wrote down verbatim all verbal interventions, which were coded according to the following categories: scientific, technical, politics, human analog, reduction, refinement, and replacement. The data revealed that only 16% of the comments were devoted to the 3 (...) explicit ethical categories and that most of the comments were technical. However, the analysis revealed that ethical concerns were implicit in both scientific and technical comments; either ethical norms had been translated into scientific and technical language, or some of the scientific and technical comments had an impact on the ethical treatment of animals. The results are discussed in relation to previous nonobservational research that identified potential pitfalls and bias in animal ethical evaluation. (shrink)

In 1909, a boy of fourteen years was designated the savior of our age by the mystic leader of the Theosophical Society. Sent from his native India to study at the finest school in Britain, the charismatic youth was groomed for the messianic role of World Teacher--a mantle he would ultimately cast off, unleashing a storm of controversy within the spiritual community. And through inner doubts and physical agony--through bitter trials of the mind, the body, and the soul--he would follow (...) his own path to enlightenment and become a shining beacon of joy and truth to millions the world over. (shrink)

Even though the 3Rs are widely accepted as ethical standards when evaluating research projects using animals as experimental subjects, the ethical status of the 3Rs still remains to be clarified. The 3Rs were not derived from any ethical theory, but they represented an attempt to increase humanity to animal experimentation and at the same time to improve validity of scientific data . The aim of the present article was to provide an ethical analysis of the 3Rs through Engelhardt's bioethics theory (...) . The analysis revealed the 3Rs fitted to some extent Engelhardt ethical values. But the analysis also revealed some internal contradictions between the 3Rs and Engelhardt's ethical vaules. Although the 3Rs are still valuable tools in animal ethical evaluation, the present analysis suggests that some ethical issues still remain to be clarified. (shrink)

Courses in the history of philosophy which exclude contributions made by women cannot legitimately claim to teach this history. This is true, not merely because those histories are incomplete, but rather because they give a biased account. I sketch the difficulties thus posed for the profession, and offer suggestions for developing a less biased, more accurate understanding of the history of philosophy.

The ethical debate about neurotechnologies—including both drugs and implanted devices—has been largely framed around the questions of whether and when these technologies could damage or promote authenticity. Patients can experience changes in mood, behavior, emotion, or preferences—seemingly, changes in character or personality. Some describe such changes by saying they feel like different people; that they have become either more or less themselves; or that they feel as though some of their moods, behaviors, emotions or preferences are not their own. These (...) kinds of statements are used to describe both changes that a drug or device is... (shrink)

Programs of drug testing welfare recipients are increasingly common in US states and have been considered elsewhere. Though often intensely debated, such programs are complicated to evaluate because their aims are ambiguous – aims like saving money may be in tension with aims like referring people to treatment. We assess such programs using a proportionality approach, which requires that for ethical acceptability a practice must be: reasonably likely to meet its aims, sufficiently important in purpose as to outweigh harms incurred, (...) and lower in costs than feasible alternatives. In the light of empirical findings, we argue that the programs fail the three requirements. Pursuing recreational drug users is not important in the light of costs incurred, while dependent users who may require referral are usually identifiable without testing and typically need a broader approach than one focussing on drugs. Drug testing of welfare recipients is therefore not ethically acceptable policy. (shrink)