We present an instrument developed to explain to students the concept of the personal ethical threshold (PET). The PET represents an individual’s susceptibility to situational pressure in his or her organization that makes moral behavior more personally difficult. Further, the PET varies according to the moral intensity of the issue at hand, such that individuals are less vulnerable to situational pressure for issues of high moral intensity, i.e., those with greater consequences for others. A higher PET reflects an individual’s greater (...) likelihood of adhering to the morally correct path, even in the face of high situational pressures (personal costs) and low moral intensity (collective importance). PET questionnaires were completed by 506 students representing eight business schools throughout the United States. Relationships between respondents’ PET and their gender, age, and major field of study, as well as the geographical location of their school, are explored. Results indicate that older students have higher PETs and that students attending schools in the northeastern part of the United States have lower PETs. These findings are discussed. It is argued that the PET instrument can be used to help students identify organizational pressures and intrapersonal processes that can impede their moral behavior in organizations. (shrink)

This paper presents an experiential exercise introducing the concept of the personal ethical threshold (PET) to help explain why moral behavior does not always follow moral intention. An individual’s PET represents the individual’s vulnerability to situational factors, i.e., how little or much it takes for members of organizations to cross their proverbial line to act in a way they deem unethical. The PET reflects the interplay among the situation, the particular ethical issue, and the individual. Exploring the PET can help (...) account for why some people are sometimes able to withstand substantial organizational pressures to behave in congruence with their ethical intentions, whereas others crumble in the face of apparently minimal situational forces. We hope that students’ exposure to and subsequent reflection upon their PET, by means of the exercise we present, will foster the development of their moral courage. (shrink)

We present an instrument developed to explain to students the concept of the personal ethical threshold. The PET represents an individual's susceptibility to situational pressure in his or her organization that makes moral behavior more personally difficult. Further, the PET varies according to the moral intensity of the issue at hand, such that individuals are less vulnerable to situational pressure for issues of high moral intensity, i.e., those with greater consequences for others. A higher PET reflects an individual's greater likelihood (...) of adhering to the morally correct path, even in the face of high situational pressures and low moral intensity. PET questionnaires were completed by 506 students representing eight business schools throughout the United States. Relationships between respondents' PET and their gender, age, and major field of study, as well as the geographical location of their school, are explored. Results indicate that older students have higher PETs and that students attending schools in the northeastern part of the United States have lower PETs. These findings are discussed. It is argued that the PET instrument can be used to help students identify organizational pressures and intrapersonal processes that can impede their moral behavior in organizations. (shrink)

Workplace bullying has a well-established body of research internationally, but the United States has lagged behind the rest of the world in the identification and investigation of this phenomenon. This paper presents a managerial perspective on bullying in organizations. The lack of attention to the concept of workplace dignity in American organizational structures has supported and even encouraged both casual and more severe forms of harassment that our workplace laws do not currently cover. The demoralization victims suffer can create toxic (...) working environments and impair organizational productivity. Some methods of protecting your organization from this blight of bullying are proposed. Bullying has always been part of the human condition; history is rife with references to abuse of power and unnecessary or excessive force. The classic bully story is of Joseph and his brothers, a tale of envy and hostility. The refinement of bullying to include various forms of legally defined social harassment is a relatively late phenomenon, however, dating to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the United States, bullying is not illegal, whereas it is illegal in many other countries. Bullying is not about benign teasing, nor does it include the off-color jokes, racial slurs, or unwelcome advances that are the hallmarks of legally defined harassment. Workplace bullying is the pattern of destructive and generally deliberate demeaning of co-workers or subordinates that reminds us of the activities of the schoolyard bully. Unlike the schoolyard bully, however, the workplace bully is an adult, usually (but not always) aware of the impact of his or her behavior on others. Bullying in the workplace, often tacitly accepted by the organizational leadership, can create an environment of psychological threat that diminishes corporate productivity and inhibits individual and group commitment. The two examples that follow will help to clarify the difference between harassment and bullying. (shrink)

This research investigated the metacognitive underpinnings of moral judgment. Participants in two studies were asked to provide quick intuitive responses to moral dilemmas and to indicate their fee...

Abductive problems and their solutions are presented by means of justification logic. We introduce additional meta-constructions in order to generate and compare different solutions to the same abductive problem. Our approach has three advantages: (i) it makes structurally explicit the solution to an abductive problem (as it has a syntactic nature); (ii) it gives a precise meaning to the notion of evidence; (iii) it provides clear definitions and procedures for the comparison of solutions that can be adapted to different needs.

Martin Heideggers Abendgespräch in einem russischen Kriegsgefangenenlager zwischen einem Jüngeren und einem Älteren ist datiert auf den 8. Mai 1945, den Tag, an dem der Nationalsozialismus besiegt wurde. Der Schlüssel zum Verständnis des Textes ist ein Zitat aus dem klassischen daoistischen Buch Zhuangzi. Warum wendet sich Heidegger an diesem Tag der chinesischen Philosophie zu? Für den Philosophen und Sinologen Fabian Heubel birgt das Abendgespräch die einzigartige Gelegenheit, Heideggers Öffnung für östliches Denken kritisch zu erörtern. Zugleich zeigt sich die Kommunikationsverweigerung zwischen (...) Heidegger und Adorno in neuem Licht, indem das Buch beide mit Hilfe daoistischen paradoxen Denkens ins Gespräch kommen lässt. Im Kommunizieren dieser drei Momente tritt eine transkulturelle Kritik hervor, die durch geschichtliches Bewusstsein von Nöten gezeichnet ist. Heideggers Kehre nach Osten ist gescheitert. Andererseits gibt es keinen philosophischen Weg nach China, der an seinem Denken vorbeiführt."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Background: Heart rate variability (HRV) has been considered as a measure of heart-brain interaction and autonomic modulation, and it is modified by cognitive and attentional tasks. In cognitive tasks, HRV was reduced in participants who achieved worse results. This could indicate the possibility of HRV predicting cognitive performance, but this association is still unclear in a high cognitive load sport such as chess Objective: To analyse modifications on HRV and subjective perception of stress, difficulty and complexity in different chess problem (...) tasks. Design: HRV was assessed at baseline. During the chess problems, HRV was also monitored, and immediately after chess problems the subjective stress, difficulty and complexity were also registered. Method: A total of 16 male chess players, age: 35.19 (13.44) and ELO: 1927.69 (167.78) were analysed while six chess problem solving tasks with different level of difficulty were conducted (two low level, two medium level and two high level chess problems). Participants were classified according to their results into two groups: high performance or low performance. Results: Friedman test showed a significant effect of tasks in HRV indexes and perceived difficulty, stress and complexity in both high and low performance groups. A decrease in HRV was observed in both groups when chess problems difficulty increased. In addition, HRV was significantly higher in the high performance group than in the low performance group during chess problems. Conclusions: An increase in autonomic modulation was observed to meet the cognitive demands of the problems, being higher while the difficulty of the tasks increased. Non-linear HRV indexes seem to be more reactive to tasks difficulty, being an interesting and useful tool in chess training. (shrink)

This article discusses J.R.R. Tolkien's understanding of fantasy as a literary genre in light of his essay On Fairy Stories. It addresses key concepts of the essay that are of great importance for a broader understanding of the author's creative process and his views on the importance of fantasy stories for society. Among the concepts discussed in this analysis are Tolkien's ideas of sub-creation, secondary world, inner consistency of reality, as well as his views on Recovery, Escape, and Consolation, which (...) he believed to be the main functions of fantasy. Finally, the concept of Fäerie, which is probably the most important term in the author's lexicon and key to his theory and practice, is also discussed in this work.Keywords: Fäerie. Fantasy Literature. J. R. R. Tolkien. On Fairy Stories. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that corruption research can benefit from studying corrupt transactions as a particular form of social interaction. We showcase the usefulness of a theoretical focus on social interaction by investigating online user reports on the website Frontdesktip.com. Through this focus, we can observe users sharing experiences and tips on the best ways of bribing hotel clerks in Las Vegas for attaining room upgrades and other complimentary extras. We employ a logistic regression analysis to examine what factors (...) influence the “successful” performance of this bribery practice. Our study makes a twofold contribution to existing research on corruption. First, on the theoretical level, we show that the typified and scripted character of social interactions can help explain the occurrence of corrupt transactions. Second, on a methodological level, our study showcases online self-reports as a useful data source to study corrupt transactions in an unobtrusive way. (shrink)

Los orígenes del patriarcado se remontan a los comienzos del pensamiento filosófico, por no mencionar el religioso, y los cuestionamientos a esa noción vienen tomando cada vez más impulso a lo largo del mundo en los últimos años. Un reflejo académico de ese movimiento es la relectura crítica de los clásicos de la filosofía a la luz del avance de los feminismos y las consideraciones de género. Juliana Udi brinda en su introducción a Patriarca un análisis exhaustivo de un clásico (...) de la filosofía política seguido de una traducción elegante y cuidadosamente anotada. Con ello intenta un regreso a las fuentes modernas del patriarcado político para identificar sus fundamentos teóricos y su contexto histórico, pero también para discutir desde una perspectiva de género su persistencia social en nuestros días. (shrink)

More than 200 million children under the age of 5 years are affected by malnutrition worldwide according to the World Health Organization. The Barbados Nutrition Study (BNS) is a 55-year longitudinal study on a Barbadian cohort with histories of moderate to severe protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) limited to the first year of life and a healthy comparison group. Using quantitative electroencephalography (EEG), differences in brain function duringchildhood(lower alpha1 activity and higher theta, alpha2 and beta activity) have previously been highlighted between participants (...) who suffered from early PEM and controls. In order to determine whether similar differences persisted intoadulthood, our current study used recordings obtained during a Go-No-Go task in a subsample of the original BNS cohort [population size (N) = 53] at ages 45–51 years. We found that previously malnourished adults [sample size (n) = 24] had a higher rate of omission errors on the task relative to controls (n= 29). Evoked-Related Potentials (ERP) were significantly different in participants with histories of early PEM, who presented with lower N2 amplitudes. These findings are typically associated with impaired conflict monitoring and/or attention deficits and may therefore be linked to the attentional and executive function deficits that have been previously reported in this cohort in childhood and again in middle adulthood. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardbound volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews treating all facets of medieval and Renaissance culture: history, art, literature, music, (...) science, law, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

M. Wedin, R. M. Dancy y C. Kirwan sostuvieron que Aristóteles no restringe el dominio del principio de no contradicción a enunciados esenciales sobre sustancias, ya que el principio descansaría en la característica universal del ser por sí o en la esencia que pertenece a cualquier clase de entidad. En contra de esta lectura, trataré de mostrar que el PNC se vincula con la semántica de los términos sustanciales; analizaré dos argumentos principales de Metaphysics Γ 4, y extraeré algunas implicaciones (...) ontológico-semánticas que surgen de ellos. (shrink)

David R. Loy gehört zu den derzeit renommiertesten buddhistischen Denkern mit westlichem Hintergrund. Mit seiner an unterschiedliche religiöse Traditionen anknüpfenden Philosophie der Nondualität beansprucht Loy eine interreligiöse Grundlage, auf der er zugleich eine auf die konkreten Herausforderungen der Gegenwart abzielende Sozial- und Umweltethik etabliert. Neben einer chronologischen Einführung in das Leben und Werk Loys bietet das Buch auch eine umfassende systematische Analyse seines Denkens.

Nota crítica a propósito de: Castro, R. y Chamorro, E. _ Para una crítica del neoliberalismo: Foucault y el Nacimiento de la biopolítica_. Madrid: Lengua de trapo. González Sánchez, I. _Neoliberalismo y castigo_. Barcelona: Bellaterra. Villacañas, J. L. _Neoliberalismo como teología política: Habermas, Foucault, Laval, Dardot y la historia del capitalismo contemporáneo_. Barcelona: NED ediciones.

En este trabajo se presentan criterios que permiten estimar parámetros de desinfección mediante el uso de luz ultravioleta UV-C de onda corta, en agua, aire y superficies. Se indican métodos para evaluar la dosificación en función de la potencia de la lámpara empleada. Este tipo de estrategia permiten resultados de hasta 99.9% de desinfección, inactivando diferentes tipos de microorganismos. Estas referencias sirven de base para el diseño de dispositivos de utilidad en la presente emergencia por COVID-19, cuyo origen, al ser (...) viral, es susceptible al mismo método de desinfección debido al proceso de dimerización del ADN, donde el daño producido en la estructura celular, afecta la capacidad de reproducción y de funcionalidad. Palabras Clave: luz UV-C o germicida, desinfección UV, dimerización del ADN. Referencias [1]R. Wallace, M. Ouellette and J. Jean, "Effect of UV‐C light or hydrogen peroxide wipes on the inactivation of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium difficile spores and norovirus surrogate", Journal of Applied Microbiology, vol. 127, no. 2, pp. 586-597, 2019. [2]J. Vargas, "Efecto de la radiación gamma sobre las características físico - químicas, sensoriales y microbiológicas en páprika en polvo ", Revista ECIPeru, pp. 68-71, 2019. [3]M. Ángeles García y P. Fernández, "Luz ultravioleta e inmunidad", Piel, vol. 21, no. 8, pp. 367-368, 2016. [4]W. Pachuau y R. Tiwari, " Deep Ultraviolet Light Emitting Diodes: Physics, Performance, and Applications", ECS Meetings, 2014. [5]W. Kowalski, Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation Handbook, 5th ed. Berlin: Springer Berlin, 2014, pp. 1-13. [6]W. Kowalski, Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation Handbook, 5th ed. Berlin: Springer Berlin, 2014, pp. 17-47. [7]"Germicidal Ultraviolet ", Media.ies.org, 2020. [En línea]. Disponible en: https://media.ies.org/docs/standards/IES%20CR-2-20-V1a-20200507.pdf. [Último acceso: 16 de junio de 2020]. [8]J. Bolton y C. Cotton, The ultraviolet disinfection handbook, 3rd ed. Denver, Colo.: American Water Works Association, 2008, pp. 13-33. [9]W. Kowalski, Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation Handbook, 5th ed. Berlin: Springer Berlin, 2014, pp. 8-9. [10]P. Aguirre, J. García y R. Mujeriego Sahuquillo, "Desinfección con cloro y luz UV en un proceso convencional de regeneración de agua", Ingeniería del agua, vol. 11, no. 1, p. 75, 2004. (shrink)

Membership in voluntary organizations is associated with individual and social benefits. Due to the negative consequences of the global pandemic on older people, and the governmental challenges posed by population aging, voluntary membership is of great importance to society. To effectively promote volunteering among older people, it is necessary to understand the determinants of voluntary membership. This study analyses the influence of individual values—secular/traditional and survival/self-expression–on voluntary membership among European adults. Specifically, it examines which values orient two age groups, as (...) well as men and women toward a certain type of association. The sample of 31,985 comprises 60% of adults aged 50–64 and 40% aged 65–79; of which 56% are women and 44% men. The empirical estimation considers different levels of data aggregation: individual, national and welfare system, therefore multilevel analysis is used as an analytical strategy. Individual-level variables from the Integrated Values Survey and national-level variables from the World Bank and Eurostat are used. The results indicate that traditional and self-expression values promote membership in voluntary organizations in general more than secular and survival values. However, there are differences according to the type of organization. Furthermore, values are found to moderate the effect of age and gender on voluntary membership. (shrink)

We review scholarship that examines relationships - and distinctions - between religion and delusion. We begin by outlining and endorsing the position that both involve belief. Next, we present the prevailing psychiatric view that religious beliefs are not delusional if they are culturally accepted. While this cultural exemption has controversial implications, we argue it is clinically valuable and consistent with a growing awareness of the social - as opposed to purely epistemic - function of belief formation. Finally, we review research (...) on continuities between religious and delusional cognition, which reveals that religious content is quite common in delusions and which provides tentative evidence for a positive relationship between religious belief and delusion-like belief in the general population. (shrink)

David Hume (1711–1776) believed a ‘confederacy of authors’, brought together by the notoriously pugnacious William Warburton (1698–1779), were his most consistent and scurrilous critics. Warburton and his ‘School’ were Hume’s bêtes noires and embodied so much of what he fought against. Only there is reason to believe that the ‘Warburtonian School’ was more a useful fiction than a historical reality. The following deep dive into Humeana and the ‘stuff of anecdote’ digs up substantial conclusions about Hume’s philosophical project and context. (...) Any glorifying picture of Hume admirably ignoring sustained ‘Warburtonian’ name-calling is not an accurate description of the early reception of his writings. Hume did respond – at least, occasionally, privately and publicly. Moreover, the ‘Warburtonian School’ does not seem to exist – at least, it did not exist if it is taken to refer to a coherent group of writers, numbering more than two, concerned with attacking Hume. The response to Hume of ‘Warburtonians’ who can be identified was varied, disparate, and often positive. Warburton even came to like Hume’s historical writings. Hume’s claim that such a School existed may have led to the post hoc creation of the School in the minds of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century commentators. (shrink)

Cost conversations are essential to informed consent because patients have a right to information that they think is relevant, and patients overwhelmingly report that cost information is relevant to their medical decisions. Providers have an ethical responsibility to provide necessary information for informed consent, and therefore must discuss costs. The Shared Decision Making model is ideal for enabling this exchange of information, and decision aids are also helpful. Although barriers exist, many useful tools can help providers fulfill this obligation, and (...) encouraging progress is being made to improve cost transparency from insurers and facilities. (shrink)

We explored the home learning environments of 173 Mexican preschool children in relation to their numeracy performance. Parents indicated the frequency of their formal home numeracy and literacy activities, and their academic expectations for children’s numeracy and literacy performance. Children completed measures of early numeracy skills. Mexican parent–child dyads from families with either high- or low-socioeconomic status participated. Low-SES parents reported higher numeracy expectations than high-SES parents, but similar frequency of home numeracy activities. In contrast, high-SES parents reported higher frequency (...) of literacy activities. Path analyses showed that operational numeracy activities were positively related to children’s numeracy skills in the high- but not in the low-SES group. These findings improve the understanding of the role of the home environment in different contexts and provide some insights into the sources of the variable patterns of relations between home learning activities and children’s numeracy outcomes. They also suggest that SES is a critical factor to consider in research on children’s home numeracy experiences. (shrink)

Throughout the Old Testament, the stories, laws, and songs not only teach a way of life that requires individuals to be moral, but they demonstrate how. In biblical studies, character ethics has been one of the fastest-growing areas of interest. Whereas ethics usually studies rules of behavior, character ethics focuses on how people are formed to be moral agents in the world. This book presents the most up-to-date academic work in Old Testament character ethics, covering topics throughout the Torah, the (...) Prophets, and the Writings, in addition to the use of the Bible in the modern world. In addition to Carroll and Lapsley, contributors are Denise M. Ackermann, Cheryl B. Anderson, Samuel E. Balentine, William P. Brown, Walter Brueggemann, Thomas B. Dozeman, Bob Ekblad, Jose Rafael Escobar R., Theodore Hiebert, Kathleen O'Connor, Dennis T. Olson, J. David Pleins, Luis R. Rivera Rodriguez, J. J. M. Roberts, and Daniel L. Smith-Christopher. (shrink)

In The Colorful Conservative, R.O.P. Lopez culls important insights into American culture from the works of Phillis Wheatley, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, William Wells Brown, and Walt Whitman. Lopez contends that many of the tensions that emerged prior to the Civil War remain unresolved; thus, the nineteenth century never ended and Americans still live in the literary framework of the 1800s. Beyond political distinctions of the left and the right, there are really four poles: The Left, The Conformist (...) Burkeans, The Anarchist-Nihilist-Libertarians, and The Colorful Conservatives. The Left and the Colorful Conservatives are the two poles most at odds with each other. The Colorful Conservatives, Lopez argues, encompass these five American authors and are the driving force behind many unique paradoxes in the United States' political culture"--Back cover. (shrink)

This article discusses the meanings of “creativity”—tvorchestvo—as we encounter it in Georges Florovsky’s thought, first and foremost in his magnum opus Ways of Russian Theology (1937). Tvorchestvo had by this time become a key concept in Russian pre-revolutionary and later émigré thought. It is associated above all with Nikolai Berdyaev’s philosophy, but it also plays an important role in Sergei Bulgakov’s philosophy of economy. In both cases, it stands for the human response to divine creation. Moreover, and somewhat less famously, (...) it was also an epistemological concept in the religious idealism of Vladimir Solovyov as well as in Russian neo-Kantianism (Fyodor Stepun), where it stood for the active, synthetic faculty of our minds. Florovsky, meanwhile, used it as a description of how we should relate to the patristic heritage, but also to history more generally: Our attitude should be “creative,” active, as well as both backward- and forward-looking. This “return to the Fathers” was a central component of Florovsky’s neopatristic program, but, interestingly, in order to conceptualize this return, Florovsky took over a concept from traditions that his own approach otherwise firmly criticized. By analyzing Florovsky’s use of tvorchestvo, this article addresses the broader question as to the differences and parallels between the neopatristic movement and the legacy of the Russian Renaissance (Silver Age). (shrink)

How do we explain violence? What is so significant of modern forms of violence that it has produced such large-scale destruction in its wake? This volume builds on the political philosophy of Wittgenstein, his notions of peace and violence, to explore how violence in any form is contained within culturally or ideologically formed institutions. Drawing on Wittgenstein's work on language, it explores the link between language and violence, everydayness, culture. It examines everyday instances of micro-violence which we sometimes forget to (...) recall. This book puts forth the claim that any theory of violence will have to touch upon the many myriad - both micro and macro -- political, social and cultural interactions that make up the human condition. The author further comments on the unseen ways in which violence has been instrumentalized in modern history's many stages to create a spectacle of power so as to reinforce authority. The volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of peace and conflict studies, political philosophy, linguistics and modern history. (shrink)

R S Peters; Education and Justification, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 28–38, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1.