Codes of ethics are being increasingly adopted in organizations worldwide, yet their effects on employee perceptions and behavior have not been thoroughly addressed. This study used a sample of 613 management accountants drawn from the United States to study the relationship between corporate and professional codes of ethics and employee attitudes and behaviors. The presence of corporate codes of ethics was associated with less perceived wrongdoing in organizations, but not with an increased propensity to report observed unethical behavior. Further, organizations (...) that adopted formal codes of ethics exhibited value orientations that went beyond financial performance to include responsibility to the commonweal. In contrast to corporate codes of ethics, professional codes of ethical conduct had no influence on perceived wrongdoing in organization nor these codes affect the propensity to report observed unethical activities. (shrink)

John Locke was born in Wrington and brought up in nearby Pensford, a village six miles south of Bristol. In 1647 Locke entered England's finest school,Westminster, under the renowned Richard Busby. At the close of his life, he recommended not only the New Testament but also Cicero's De Officiis (On Duties) as the best guides to morality. Locke always regarded civil and ecclesiastical governance as two equally consequential aspects of public life. Locke's political identity in aligned him with the (...) "Junto" Whigs, one of whose number, Lord Chancellor Somers, was a close associate. During his period in Shaftesbury's entourage, Locke became involved in England's growing commitment to America, a connection which had a profound impact on his thinking. From 1696 until his resignation through ill health in 1700, Locke was one of the state's most senior civil servants, a commissioner on the newly formed Board of Trade and Plantations. (shrink)

The book explores what characterises a a good lifea and how this idea has been affected by globalisation and neoliberalism.".

This article looks at Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of molecular biology, focusing particularly on their reading of two highly influential works by the eminent French molecular biologists François Jacob and Jacques Monod, La logique du vivant and Le hasard et la nécessité. In these two works, Jacob and Monod present the significance of molecular biology in broadly reductionist terms. What is more, the lac operon model of gene regulation that they propose serves to reinforce the so-called Central Dogma of molecular (...) biology, according to which information passes from DNA to RNA to proteins, with no reverse route. However, Deleuze and Guattari discover intensive potentials within the descriptions of molecular biology offered by both writers. It is argued that Jacob's work in particular, as it has developed in the years since the publication of La logique du vivant in 1970, has itself developed these intensive potentials. (shrink)

This article explores literary interrogations of the bioethical implications of cloning. It does so by outlining the basic science of cloning before going on to question the dominance of the Freudian notion of the ‘uncanny’ in the critical theoretical responses to cloning by figures such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek. The second half of the article turns to two recent novels exploring the theme of cloning: Eva Hoffman's The Secret, and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. It is argued (...) that the former rehearses familiar themes of revulsion connected to the figure of the clone, yet resolves the struggle for identity in a ‘human’ conclusion; whereas the latter maintains the uncanny in-human difference of the clone even as it highlights the dangers of the biopolitical instrumentalization of life itself. The article therefore argues that fictional treatments of cloning can provide an important alternative to simplified debates on the subject in the mass media. (shrink)

The modernist and scientific juxtaposition of object and subject are inappropriate when investigating the nature of “knowledge.” This commentary argues that the usual methodological dichotomy fails when it is applied to the domain of “knowledge.” The two instead coalesce within the topic itself, demanding the most careful self-awareness.

For most of the history of prejudice research, negativity has been treated as its emotional and cognitive signature, a conception that continues to dominate work on the topic. By this definition, prejudice occurs when we dislike or derogate members of other groups. Recent research, however, has highlighted the need for a more nuanced and “inclusive” (Eagly 2004) perspective on the role of intergroup emotions and beliefs in sustaining discrimination. On the one hand, several independent lines of research have shown that (...) unequal intergroup relations are often marked by attitudinal complexity, with positive responses such as affection and admiration mingling with negative responses such as contempt and resentment. Simple antipathy is the exception rather than the rule. On the other hand, there is mounting evidence that nurturing bonds of affection between the advantaged and the disadvantaged sometimes entrenches rather than disrupts wider patterns of discrimination. Notably, prejudice reduction interventions may have ironic effects on the political attitudes of the historically disadvantaged, decreasing their perceptions of injustice and willingness to engage in collective action to transform social inequalities.These developments raise a number of important questions. Has the time come to challenge the assumption that negative evaluations are inevitably the cognitive and affective hallmarks of discrimination? Is the orthodox concept of prejudice in danger of side-tracking, if not obstructing, progress towards social justice in a fuller sense? What are the prospects for reconciling a prejudice reduction model of change, designed to get people to like one another more, with a collective action model of change, designed to ignite struggles to achieve intergroup equality? (shrink)

This book brings together a comprehensive collection of the writings of one of the greatest philosophers in the Western tradition. Along with five of John Locke's major essays, seventy shorter essays are included that stand outside the canonical works that Locke published during his lifetime. For the first time students will be able to fully explore the evolution of Locke's ideas concerning the philosophical foundations of morality and sociability, the boundary of church and state, the shaping of constitutions, and (...) the conduct of government and public policy. (shrink)

This is the first book to use complexity theory to open up the 'geophilosophy' developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, Anti-Oedipus and What is Philosophy?.

This book provides a comprehensive, systematic theory of moral responsibility. The authors explore the conditions under which individuals are morally responsible for actions, omissions, consequences, and emotions. The leading idea in the book is that moral responsibility is based on 'guidance control'. This control has two components: the mechanism that issues in the relevant behavior must be the agent's own mechanism, and it must be appropriately responsive to reasons. The book develops an account of both components. The authors go on (...) to offer a sustained defense of the thesis that moral responsibility is compatible with causal determinism. (shrink)

Things that don't exist -- Fictional object nominalism -- Fictional object realism -- Meinongianism -- God's existence and nonexistence -- Contingency and nonexistence -- Perfection and divine existence -- Nonexistence and creatures -- Ex nihilo and nonexistence -- Infinite existence and countless nonexistents -- Providence and freedom -- Nonexistents and middle knowledge -- Evil as nonexistence.

The journal of Cognitive Computation is defined in part by the notion that biologically inspired computational accounts are at the heart of cognitive processes in both natural and artificial systems. Many studies of various important aspects of cognition (memory, observational learning, decision making, reward prediction learning, attention control, etc.) have been made by modelling the various experimental results using ever-more sophisticated computer programs. In this manner progressive inroads have been made into gaining a better understanding of the many components of (...) cognition. Concomitantly in both science and science fiction the hope is periodically re-ignited that a manmade system can be engineered to be fully cognitive and conscious purely in virtue of its execution of an appropriate computer program. However, whilst the usefulness of the computational metaphor in many areas of psychology and neuroscience is clear, it has not gone unchallenged and in this article I will review a group of philosophical arguments that suggest either such unequivocal optimism in computationalism is misplaced—computation is neither necessary nor sufficient for cognition—or panpsychism (the belief that the physical universe is fundamentally composed of elements each of which is conscious) is true. I conclude by highlighting an alternative metaphor for cognitive processes based on communication and interaction. (shrink)

Contemporary virtue epistemology (hereafter ‘VE’) is a diverse collection of approaches to epistemology. At least two central tendencies are discernible among the approaches. First, they view epistemology as a normative discipline. Second, they view intellectual agents and communities as the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, with a focus on the intellectual virtues and vices embodied in and expressed by these agents and communities. -/- This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary VE research program. These include (...) novel attempts to resolve longstanding disputes, solve perennial problems, grapple with novel challenges, and expand epistemology’s horizons. In the process, it reveals the diversity within VE. Beyond sharing the two unifying commitments mentioned above, its practitioners diverge over the nature of intellectual virtues, which questions to ask, and which methods to use. -/- It will be helpful to note some terminology before proceeding. First, we use ‘cognitive’, ‘epistemic’ and ‘intellectual’ synonymously. Second, we often use ‘normative’ broadly to include not only norms and rules, but also duties and values. Finally, ‘practitioners’ names contemporary virtue epistemologists. (shrink)

Beliefs are concrete particulars containing ideas of properties and notions of things, which also are concrete. The claim made in a belief report is that the agent has a belief (i) whose content is a specific singular proposition, and (ii) which involves certain of the agent's notions and ideas in a certain way. No words in the report stand for the notions and ideas, so they are unarticulated constituents of the report's content (like the relevant place in "it's raining"). The (...) belief puzzles (Hesperus, Cicero, Pierre) involve reports about two different notions. So the analysis gets the puzzling truth values right. (shrink)

In 15 insightful essays, Jacques Derrida and an international group of scholars of religion explore postmodern thinking about God and consider the nature of forgiveness in relation to the paradoxes of the gift. Among the themes addressed by contributors are the possibilities of imagining God as unthinkable, imagining God as non-patriarchal, imagining a return to Augustine, and imagining an age in which praise is far more important than narrative. Questioning God moves readers beyond the parameters of metaphysical reason and modernist (...) rationality as it attempts to think the questions of God and forgiveness in a postmodernist context. Contributors include John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, Mark Dooley, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Robert Gibbs, Jean Greisch, Kevin Hart, Richard Kearney, Cleo McNelly Kearns, John Milbank, Regina M. Schwartz, Michael J. Scanlon, and Graham Ward. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor. (shrink)

The most cursory examination of the history of artificial intelligence highlights numerous egregious claims of its researchers, especially in relation to a populist form of ‘strong’ computationalism which holds that any suitably programmed computer instantiates genuine conscious mental states purely in virtue of carrying out a specific series of computations. The argument presented herein is a simple development of that originally presented in Putnam’s (Representation & Reality, Bradford Books, Cambridge in 1988 ) monograph, “Representation & Reality”, which if correct, has (...) important implications for turing machine functionalism and the prospect of ‘conscious’ machines. In the paper, instead of seeking to develop Putnam’s claim that, “everything implements every finite state automata”, I will try to establish the weaker result that, “everything implements the specific machine Q on a particular input set ( x )”. Then, equating Q ( x ) to any putative AI program, I will show that conceding the ‘strong AI’ thesis for Q (crediting it with mental states and consciousness) opens the door to a vicious form of panpsychism whereby all open systems, (e.g. grass, rocks etc.), must instantiate conscious experience and hence that disembodied minds lurk everywhere. (shrink)

This book analyzes the philosophical foundations of sensorimotor theory and discusses the most recent applications of sensorimotor theory to human computer interaction, child's play, virtual reality, robotics, and linguistics. -/- Why does a circle look curved and not angular? Why doesn't red sound like a bell? Why, as I interact with the world, is there something it is like to be me? These are simple questions to pose but more difficult to answer. An analytic philosopher might respond to the first (...) by merely observing, ``if we ponder the concept `circle' we find that it is the essence of a circle to be round''; but where does this definition come from? Was it set in stone by the gods, the divine arbiters of circle-ness (red-ness and conscious-ness)? It is a measure of the importance of Kevin O'Regan and Alva Noe's 2001 paper `A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness' that it reveals deep scientific and philosophical insight on these foundational issues of perception. -/- Opening with a chapter from Kevin O'Regan, this collection of new essays continues by presenting fifteen additional essays on as many developments achieved in recent years in this field. It provides readers with a critical review of the sensorimotor theory and in so doing introduces them to a radically new approach in cognitive science. (shrink)

The most cursory examination of the history of artificial intelligence highlights numerous egregious claims of its researchers, especially in relation to a populist form of ‘strong’ computationalism which holds that any suitably programmed computer instantiates genuine conscious mental states purely in virtue of carrying out a specific series of computations. The argument presented herein is a simple development of that originally presented in Putnam’s (Representation & Reality, Bradford Books, Cambridge in 1988) monograph, “Representation & Reality”, which if correct, has important (...) implications for turing machine functionalism and the prospect of ‘conscious’ machines. In the paper, instead of seeking to develop Putnam’s claim that, “everything implements every finite state automata”, I will try to establish the weaker result that, “everything implements the specific machine Q on a particular input set (x)”. Then, equating Q (x) to any putative AI program, I will show that conceding the ‘strong AI’ thesis for Q (crediting it with mental states and consciousness) opens the door to a vicious form of panpsychism whereby all open systems, (e.g. grass, rocks etc.), must instantiate conscious experience and hence that disembodied minds lurk everywhere. (shrink)

The initial argument presented herein is not significantly original—it is a simple reflection upon a notion of computation originally developed by Putnam and criticised by Chalmers et al. . In what follows, instead of seeking to justify Putnam’s conclusion that every open system implements every Finite State Automaton and hence that psychological states of the brain cannot be functional states of a computer, I will establish the weaker result that, over a finite time window every open system implements the trace (...) of FSA Q, as it executes program on input . If correct the resulting bold philosophical claim is that phenomenal states—such as feelings and visual experiences—can never be understood or explained functionally. (shrink)

The argument presented in this paper is not a direct attack or defence of the Chinese Room Argument (CRA), but relates to the premise at its heart, that syntax is not sufficient for semantics, via the closely associated propositions that semantics is not intrinsic to syntax and that syntax is not intrinsic to physics. However, in contrast to the CRA’s critique of the link between syntax and semantics, this paper will explore the associated link between syntax and physics. The main (...) argument presented here is not significantly original – it is a simple reflection upon that originally given by Hilary Putnam (Putnam 1988) and criticised by David Chalmers and others: instead of seeking to justify Putnam’s claim that, “every open system implements every Finite State Automaton (FSA)”, and hence that psychological states of the brain cannot be functional states of a computer, I will seek to establish the weaker result that, over a finite time window every open system implements the trace of a particular FSA Q, as it executes program (p) on input (x). That this result leads to panpsychism is clear as, equating Q (p, x) to a specific Strong AI program that is claimed to instantiate phenomenal states as it executes, and following Putnam’s procedure, identical computational (and ex hypothesi phenomenal) states (ubiquitous little ‘pixies’) can be found in every open physical system. (shrink)

This unique text focuses on ethical puzzles and hypothetical problems to help students at all levels understand and refine their moral principles and see how they apply to various situations. An extensive, thoughtfully written introduction provides the theoretical background and lays out numerous moral puzzle cases that are analyzed and discussed throughout the text. Challenging follow-up articles argue a variety of stances on the ethical puzzles set forth in the introduction.

The issue of the dimensionality of materialism and postmaterialism, and their impact on key social and personal indicators, has been a hotly debated topic for decades. This study sought to achieve two goals to further our understanding of these constructs. First, it assessed whether an interactive materialism–postmaterialism conceptualization could be expanded to predict outcomes related to well-being. Second, the study extended the interactive model by using Richins’ three dimensions of materialism instead of the unidimensional construct utilized in previous studies. Results (...) indicated that the interactive model successfully predicted three different measures of well-being, specifically physical symptoms, stress, and subjective vitality. Results are discussed in terms of extending materialism–postmaterialism theory, both with respect to refining the materialism construct as well as its associations with new criterion variables. (shrink)

_The Legacy of Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader_ is a collection of brand new papers by seventeen Marcuse scholars, which provides a comprehensive reassessment of the relevance of Marcuse's critical theory at the beginning of the 21st century. Although best known for his reputation in critical theory, Herbert Marcuse's work has had impact on areas as diverse as politics, technology, aesthetics, psychoanalysis and ecology. This collection addresses the contemporary relevance of Marcuse's work in this broad variety of fields and from (...) an international perspective. In Part One, veteran scholars of Marcuse and the Frankfurt school examine the legacy of various specific areas of Marcuse's thought, including the quest for radical subjectivity, the maternal ethic and the negative dialectics of imagination. Part Two focuses on a very new trend in Marcuse scholarship: the link between Marcuse's ideas and environmental thought. The third part of this collection is dedicated to the work of younger Marcuse scholars, with the aim of documenting Marcuse's reception among the next generation of critical theorists. The final section of the book contains recollections on Marcuse's person rather than his critical theory, including an informative look back over his life by his son, Peter. (shrink)

As John Henry Newman reflected on 'The Idea of a University' more than a century and a half ago, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together some of the nation's most eminent thinkers on higher education to reflect on the nature and purposes of the American university today. Their mordant reflections paint a picture of the American university in crisis. This book is essential reading for thoughtful citizens, scholars, and educational policymakers.

This issue of the Kybernetes journal is concerned with the philosophical question- Can a Machine Think? Famously, in his 1950 paper `Computing Machinery andIntelligence' [9], the British mathematician Alan Turing suggested replacing this question - which he found \too meaningless to deserve discussion" - with a simple -behavioural - test based on an imagined `Victorianesque' pastime he entitled the`imitation game'. In this special issue of Kybernetes a selection of authors with a special interest in Turing's work (including those who participated (...) in the 2008 AISB Turing Symposium) have been invited to explore and clarify issues arising from Turing's 1950 paper on the Imitation Game; now more widely known as the Turing test. (shrink)

The issue of the institution is not addressed systematically anywhere in the literature on Foucault, although it is everywhere to be found in Foucault's writings._ Foucault and the Critique of Institutions_ not only interprets the work of Foucault but also applies it to the question of the institution. Foucault is a master at analyzing the web of social relations that effectively shape the modern individual. While these social relations are smaller and finer than institutions, institutions are, by Foucault's account, saturated (...) with such relations. This study is the first sustained account to follow up the implications of Foucault's provocative theses about power for the analysis of institutions. _Foucault and the Critique of Institutions _offers a set of preliminary essays that raise basic questions about the theoretical character of Foucault's thought and then several groups of other essays that go on to take up the practical issues raised by his work. Joseph Margolis and Jitendra Mohanty address one of the most complex problems posed by Foucault's texts: his status as a philosopher. Mark Poster explores the problem of the "self" in Foucault, while Judith Butler focuses her searching investigation of the self on its gendered nature. Joseph Rouse examines the functioning of the natural sciences within the institutional setting of the university and the academic profession, while Chuck Dyke and Mary Schmelzer present vigorous critiques of the normalizing power of the university. Robert Moore and Mark Yount offer original studies of the implications of Foucault's work for the workplace, labor law, and affirmative action. Finally, John Caputo studies Foucault's famous history of madness and raises the question of the possibility of exercising a "healing" and not merely a "normalizing" power in the mental hospital and the church. (shrink)