In public accounting, it is well documented that auditors’ focus on the financial/profitability aspects of their work creates ethical challenges that can compromise the auditors’ ability to uphold the public interest :C28–C36, 2008; Chow et al., in Res Prof Responsib Ethics Account 17:97–138, 2013; Fogarty and Rigsby, in J Account Org Change 6:300–329, 2010; Gendron, in Contemp Account Res 18:283–310, 2001; Account Org Soc 27:659–684, 2002; Lampe and Garcia, in Res Prof Responsib Ethics Account 17:1–45, 2013; Wyatt, in Account Horiz (...) 18:45–53, 2004; Zeff, Account Horizons 17:189–205, 2003a; Account Horizons 17:267–286, 2003b). Less well-studied are other accounting settings :549–563, 2013; Jones et al., in J Account Literature 22:45–103, 2003). In their paper, Fiolleau and Kaplan, 2016) address the void by providing insight into the impact of corporate reward structure on the ethical sensitivity of accountants practicing in industry and accounting students. Further, they contribute to the literature by measuring ethical sensitivity using a novel funnel questioning technique, which addresses methodological challenges associated with studying ethical sensitivity. In these comments, I discuss my perspective on Fiolleau and Kaplan’s, 2016) key contributions to the literature and provide suggestions for moving the research forward in the future. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe science does not or should not aim at the truth. Sometimes they say scientists do not really care much about truth. Sometimes they say truth is an outdated Enlightenment hand-me-down, full of confusion and rhetoric but empty of explanatory or normative importance. And sometimes they argue that it is irrational to pursue the truth. This last claim is the target of the present paper.

We might suppose it is not only instrumentally valuable for beliefs to be true, but that it is intrinsically valuable – truth makes a non-derivative, positive contribution to a belief's overall value. Some intrinsic goods are better than others, though, and this article considers the question of how good truth is, compared to other intrinsic goods. I argue that truth is the worst of all intrinsic goods; every other intrinsic good is better than it. I also suggest the best explanation (...) for truth's inferiority is that it is not really an intrinsic good at all. It is intrinsically neutral. (shrink)

Case-based instruction is a stable feature of ethics education, however, little is known about the attributes of the cases that make them effective. Emotions are an inherent part of ethical decision-making and one source of information actively stored in case-based knowledge, making them an attribute of cases that likely facilitates case-based learning. Emotions also make cases more realistic, an essential component for effective case-based instruction. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of emotional case content, and complementary (...) socio-relational case content, on case-based knowledge acquisition and transfer on future ethical decision-making tasks. Study findings suggest that emotional case content stimulates retention of cases and facilitates transfer of ethical decision-making principles demonstrated in cases. (shrink)

Several of the contributions to the Lynch et al. Special issue make the claim that conversation-analytic research into epistemics is ‘routinely crafted at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail, and what that detail may show us’. Here, we seek to address the inappositeness of this critique by tracing precisely how it is that recognizable actions emerge from distinct practices of interaction. We begin by reviewing some of the foundational tenets of conversation-analytic theory and method – including the relationship (...) between position and composition, and the making of collections – as these appear to be primary sources of confusion for many of the contributors to the Lynch et al. Special Issue. We then target some of the specific arguments presented in the Special Issue, including the alleged ‘over-hearer’s’ writing of metrics, the provision of so-called ‘alternative’ analyses and the supposed ‘crafting’ of generalizations in epistemics research. In addition, in light of Lynch’s more general assertion that conversation analysis has recently been experiencing a ‘rapprochement’ with what he disparagingly refers to as the ‘juggernaut’ of linguistics, we discuss the specific expertise that linguists have to offer in analyzing particular sorts of interactional detail. The article as a whole thus illustrates that, rather than being produced ‘at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail’, conversation-analytic findings – including its work in epistemics – are unambiguously anchored in such detail. We conclude by offering our comments as to the link between CA and linguistics more generally, arguing that this relationship has long proven to be – and indeed continues to be – a mutually beneficial one. (shrink)

Higher order cognitive processes, including ethical decision making (EDM), are influenced by the experiencing of discrete emotions. Recent research highlights the negative influence one such emotion, anger, has on EDM and its underlying processes. The mechanism, however, by which anger disrupts the EDM has not been investigated. The current study sought to discover whether cognitive appraisals of an emotion-evoking event are the driving mechanisms behind the influence of anger on EDM. One primary (goal obstacle) and one secondary (certainty) appraisal of (...) anger were examined. Study results suggest that appraisals of certainty are the driving mechanism behind the negative relationship between anger and EDM. Certainty appraisals led to less application of EDM-promoting strategies and more unethical social motives. Findings further highlight the value of investigating appraisals of emotional events, given their cognitive nature, for their potential effects on cognitive operations, such as EDM. Future directions and implications are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the implications of Grace de Laguna and Joel Katzav's work for the charge of conservatism against the analytic tradition. We differentiate that conservatism into three kinds: starting place; path dependency; and modesty. We also think again about gender in philosophy, consider the positive account of speculative philosophy presented by de Laguna and Katzav in comparison to some other naturalist trajectories, and conclude with a brief Australian addendum that reflects on a similar period in our own (...) country which was also associated with the professional institutionalisation of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

An epistemic duty would be a duty to believe, disbelieve, or withhold judgment from a proposition, and it would be grounded in purely evidential or epistemic considerations. If I promise to believe it is raining, my duty to believe is not epistemic. If my evidence is so good that, in light of it alone, I ought to believe it is raining, then my duty to believe supposedly is epistemic. I offer a new argument for the claim that there are no (...) epistemic duties. Though people do sometimes have duties to believe, disbelieve, or withhold judgment from propositions, those duties are never grounded in purely epistemic considerations. (shrink)

Despite their centrality and importance to both science and philosophy, relatively little has been written about thought experiments. This volume brings together a series of extremely interesting studies of the history, mechanics, and applications of this important intellectual resource. A distinguished list of philosophers and scientists consider the role of thought experiments in their various disciplines, and argue that an examination of thought experimentation goes to the heart of both science and philosophy.

ABSTRACT: Epistemic duties would be duties to believe, disbelieve, or withhold judgement from propositions, and they would be grounded in purely evidential considerations. I offer a new argument for the claim that there are no epistemic duties. Though people may have duties to believe, disbelieve, or withhold judgement from propositions, those duties are never grounded in purely epistemic considerations. Rather, allegedly epistemic duties are a species of moral duty.RÉSUMÉ: Les fonctions épistémiques sont censées désigner le fait de croire ou de (...) ne pas croire des propositions, ou de suspendre notre jugement, et seraient fondées uniquement sur la prise en compte de l’évidence. Je présente un nouvel argument soutenant que les fonctions épistémiques n’existent pas. Bien que nous devions recourir aux fonctions de croire ou de ne pas croire des propositions, ou de suspendre notre jugement, ces fonctions ne sont jamais fondées sur d’uniques considérations épistémiques. Ce que l’on reconnaît comme des fonctions épistémiques appartient plutôt à l’espèce des fonctions morales. (shrink)

The following four assumptions plausibly describe the ideal rational agent. (1) She knows what her beliefs are. (2) She desires to believe only truths. (3) Whenever she desires that P → Q and knows that P, she desires that Q. (4) She does not both desire that P and desire that ~P, for any P. Although the assumptions are plausible, they have an implausible consequence. They imply that the ideal rational agent does not believe and desire contradictory propositions. She neither (...) desires the world to be any different than she thinks it is, nor thinks it is any different than she desires it to be. The problem of preserving our intuitions about desire, without embracing the implausible conclusion, is what I call “the Wishful Thinking Puzzle.” In this paper, I examine how this puzzle arises, and I argue that it is surprisingly difficult to solve. Even the decision theoretic conception of desire is not immune to the puzzle. One approach, the contrastive conception of desire, does avoid the puzzle without being ad hoc, but it remains too inchoate to win our full confidence. (shrink)

The recent renewal of interest in the philosophy of Henri Bergson has increased both recognition of his influence on twentieth-century philosophy and attention to his relationship to phenomenology. Until now, the question of Martin Heidegger’s debt to Bergson has remained largely unanswered. Heidegger’s brief discussion of Bergson in Being and Time is geared toward explaining why he fails in his attempts to think more radically about time. Despite this dismissal, a close look at Heidegger’s early works dealing with temporality reveals (...) a sustained engagement with Bergson’s thought. In The Origin of Time, Heath Massey evaluates Heidegger’s critique of Bergson and examines how Bergson’s efforts to rethink time in terms of duration anticipate Heidegger’s own interpretation of temporality. Massey demonstrates how Heidegger follows Bergson in seeking to uncover “primordial time” by disentangling temporality from spatiality, how he associates Bergson with the tradition of philosophy that covers up this phenomenon, and how he overlooks Bergson’s ontological turn in Matter and Memory. Through close readings of early major works by both thinkers, Massey argues that Bergson is a much more radical thinker with respect to time than Heidegger allows. (shrink)

One of his six introductions to philosophy, widely used by students in Alexandria, Ammonius' lecture on Porphyry was recorded in writing by his students in the commentary translated here. Along with five other types of introductions (three of which are translated in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle volume Elias and David: Introductions to Philosophy with Olympiodorus: Introduction to Logic) it made Greek philosophy more accessible to other cultures. These introductions became standard in Ammonius' school and included a popular set of (...) five or more definitions of philosophy, some of them drawn from commentaries on quite different works. Ammonius' lecture expounded the most celebrated and discussed previous introduction written by Porphyry 200 years earlier, which was devoted to five main technical terms of Aristotle's logic. Ammonius was sympathetic to Porphyry because they both sought to harmonise the views of Plato and Aristotle with each other, arguing in different ways that the two philosophers did not disagree about the nature of universals. Porphyry's introduction was a hugely influential work for centuries after its composition, and this commentary by Ammonius served to maintain its position at the centre of later schools of philosophy. This English translation of Ammonius' work is the latest volume in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series and makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership. The translation is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to a prominent objection, deflationist theories of truth can’t account for the explanatory connection between true belief and successful action [Putnam 1978]. Canonical responses to the objection show how to reformulate truth-involving explanations of particular successful actions, so as to omit any mention of truth [Horwich 1998]. According to recent critics, though, the canonical strategy misses the point. The deflated paraphrases lack the generality or explanatory robustness of the original explanatory appeals to truth [Kitcher 2002; Lynch 2009; Gamester (...) 2018]. This article diagnoses the canonical response’s failure and shows how deflationists can make sense of appeals to truth in explaining practical success, in all of their generality and robustness, without construing truth as a substantial property. (shrink)

This paper argues against the almost universally held view that truth is an instrumentally valuable property of beliefs. For truth to be instrumentally valuable in the way usually supposed, it must play a causal role in the satisfaction of our desires. As it happens, truth can play no such role, because it is screened off from causal relevance by some of the truth-like properties first discussed by Stephen Stich. Because it is not causally relevant to the success of our actions, (...) truth is not instrumentally valuable in the way usually supposed. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher has argued for a causal correspondence view of truth, as against a deflationary view, on the grounds that the former is better poised than the latter to explain systematically successful patterns of action. Though Kitcher is right to focus on systematically successful action, rather than singular practical successes, he is wrong to conclude that causal correspondence theories are capable of explaining systematic success. Rather, I argue, truth bears no explanatory relation to systematic practical success. Consequently, the causal correspondence (...) view is not in a better position to explain success than the deflationary view; theories of truth are the wrong place to look for explanations of systematic practical success. (shrink)

On April 22, 1922, the Societé française de Philosophie hosted Albert Einstein for a discussion of the theory of relativity. In the course of this discussion, Henri Bergson, who was at that time writing Duration and Simultaneity, which explored some of the philosophical implications of Einstein's theory, was asked to share his thoughts. The resulting remarks offer a glimpse into Bergson's analysis of the concept of simultaneity, and Einstein's brief reply reveals his insistence that time itself, not just "the physicist's (...) time," is relative. (shrink)

This paper argues against the realization principle, which reifies the realization relation between lower-level and higher-level properties. It begins with a review of some principles of naturalistic metaphysics. Then it criticizes some likely reasons for embracing the realization principle, and finally it argues against the principle directly. The most likely reasons for embracing the principle depend on the dubious assumption that special science theories cannot be true unless special science predicates designate properties. The principle itself turns out to be false (...) because the realization relation fails the naturalistic test for reality: it makes no causal difference to the world.Footnote11This paper resulted from work done at John Heil's 2006 Mind and Metaphysics NEH Summer Seminar at Washington University in St. Louis. An early version of it was presented in a special symposium on realization at the 2007 meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology. I owe thanks to all the participants in both events for helpful discussions, and I owe particular thanks to Ken Aizawa, Torin Alter, Jason Ford, Carl Gillett, John Heil, Nicholas Helms, Pete Mandik, John Post, Gene Witmer, Michelle Wrenn, Tad Zawidzki, and two anonymous referees for the AJP. (shrink)