Financial statement users must believe that external auditors are free from management control, or users will doubt the verity of auditors' representations. Although U.S.-based auditing firms claim they are independent of their corporate clients, research has demonstrated that many individuals and groups perceive the situation otherwise. A proposal for enhancing perceptions of auditor independence is offered in this article. The proposal calls for an auditor-administered educational program, complemented by corporate audit committee involvement to lend credibility to auditors' claims.

Some critics of the accounting/auditing profession in the United States claim that independence-related quality control problems are the cause of an increased number of alleged audit failures. Certified public accountants (CPAs) were queried regarding independence impairment in their profession. Questionnaire results indicate a number of CPAs believe independence deficiencies exist, and some CPAs admit to personal independence impairment.

Suitable for those conducting research or teaching in philosophy, this title provides analyses of the continental tradition of philosophy from Kant. Placing continental philosophy within a historical context, it helps define what the continental tradition has been and where it is moving.

This volume aims to bring the two streams of research together, offering a fresh infusion of Aristotelian insights into moral psychology and philosophy of ...

Recent and rapid technological developments on many fronts have created in our society some extremely difficult moral predicaments. Previous generations have not had to face the dilemmas posed by, for example, the availability of safe abortions, sperm banks and prostoglandins. They have not had to come to terms with an unchecked exploitation of natural resources heralding imminent ecological crisis, or, worst of all, with the recognition that only in this current generation have people the capacity to destroy themselves and their (...) environment. This book seeks to show how, and why, Seventh-day Adventism has addressed these moral issues, and that the ethical questions arising from these issues are especially relevant to the Adventist church and its development. Dr Pearson looks specifically at the moral decisions Adventists have made in the area of human sexuality, on such issues as contraception, abortion, the role and status of women, divorce and homosexuality, from the beginnings of the movement to 1985. He seeks to put such decision-making in perspective by providing the general social context in which it took place, and shows how Ellen White (whose charismatic leadership held the movement together in its first fifty years) has been a major source of moral authority in the Adventist church - her writings continuing to exercise authority in a contemporary society of turmoil and change. This important book, which conveys something of the general ethos of Adventism, is the first to investigate the ethics of the movement, ans so fill a notable gap in the literature. (shrink)

Software piracy, the illegal and unauthorized duplication, sale, or distribution of software, is a widespread and costly phenomenon. According to Business Software Alliance, over 41% of the PC software packages installed worldwide were unauthorized copies. Software piracy behavior has been investigated for more than 30 years. However, after a review of the relevant literature, there appears to be two voids in this literature: a lack of studies in non-Western countries and a scarcity of process studies. This study contributes to literature (...) by developing a software piracy model to better understand the decision-making process that underlies this unethical behavior. The model was tested using data collected from a sample of 323 undergraduate business students. Consistent with the Theory of Reasoned Action, attitudes toward software piracy and subjective norms were significant predictors of intention to pirate software. Also, the results suggested that ethical ideology, public self-consciousness, and low self-control moderated the effect of these variables on intention to pirate software. The results have important practical implications for the software industry and governments hoping to curtail software piracy. Limitations of the study and recommendations for future studies are discussed as well. (shrink)

Karl Pearson is the leading figure of XX century statistics. He and his co-workers crafted the core of the theory, methods and language of frequentist or classical statistics – the prevalent inductive logic of contemporary science. However, before working in statistics, K. Pearson had other interests in life, namely, in this order, philosophy, physics, and biological heredity. Key concepts of his philosophical and epistemological system of anti-Spinozism (a form of transcendental idealism) are carried over to his subsequent works (...) on the logic of scientific discovery. This article’s main goal is to analyze K. Pearson early philosophical and theological ideas and to investigate how the same ideas came to influence contemporary science, either directly or indirectly – by the use of variant theories, methods and dialects of statistics, corresponding to variant statistical inference procedures and their specific belief calculi. (shrink)

In this book, Michael Arbib, a researcher in artificial intelligence and brain theory, joins forces with Mary Hesse, a philosopher of science, to present an integrated account of how humans 'construct' reality through interaction with the social and physical world around them. The book is a major expansion of the Gifford Lectures delivered by the authors at the University of Edinburgh in the autumn of 1983. The authors reconcile a theory of the individual's construction of reality as a network (...) of schemas 'in the head' with an account of the social construction of language, science, ideology and religion to provide an integrated schema-theoretic view of human knowledge. The authors still find scope for lively debate, particularly in their discussion of free will and of the reality of God. The book integrates an accessible exposition of background information with a cumulative marshalling of evidence to address fundamental questions concerning human action in the world and the nature of ultimate reality. (shrink)

Bishop and Trout here present a unique and provocative new approach to epistemology. Their approach aims to liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of standard analytic epistemology, and treat it as a branch of the philosophy of science. The approach is novel in its use of cost-benefit analysis to guide people facing real reasoning problems and in its framework for resolving normative disputes in psychology. Based on empirical data, Bishop and Trout show how people can improve their reasoning by relying (...) on Statistical Prediction Rules. They then develop and articulate the positive core of the book. Their view, Strategic Reliabilism, claims that epistemic excellence consists in the efficient allocation of cognitive resources to reliable reasoning strategies, applied to significant problems. The last third of the book develops the implications of this view for standard analytic epistemology; for resolving normative disputes in psychology; and for offering practical, concrete advice on how this theory can improve real people's reasoning. This is a truly distinctive and controversial work that spans many disciplines and will speak to an unusually diverse group, including people in epistemology, philosophy of science, decision theory, cognitive and clinical psychology, and ethics and public policy. (shrink)

Science and philosophy study well-being with different but complementary methods. Marry these methods and a new picture emerges: To have well-being is to be "stuck" in a positive cycle of emotions, attitudes, traits and success. This book unites the scientific and philosophical worldviews into a powerful new theory of well-being.

The article analyzes the neural and functional grounding of language skills as well as their emergence in hominid evolution, hypothesizing stages leading from abilities known to exist in monkeys and apes and presumed to exist in our hominid ancestors right through to modern spoken and signed languages. The starting point is the observation that both premotor area F5 in monkeys and Broca's area in humans contain a “mirror system” active for both execution and observation of manual actions, and that F5 (...) and Broca's area are homologous brain regions. This grounded the mirror system hypothesis of Rizzolatti and Arbib (1998) which offers the mirror system for grasping as a key neural “missing link” between the abilities of our nonhuman ancestors of 20 million years ago and modern human language, with manual gestures rather than a system for vocal communication providing the initial seed for this evolutionary process. The present article, however, goes “beyond the mirror” to offer hypotheses on evolutionary changes within and outside the mirror systems which may have occurred to equip Homo sapiens with a language-ready brain. Crucial to the early stages of this progression is the mirror system for grasping and its extension to permit imitation. Imitation is seen as evolving via a so-called simple system such as that found in chimpanzees (which allows imitation of complex “object-oriented” sequences but only as the result of extensive practice) to a so-called complex system found in humans (which allows rapid imitation even of complex sequences, under appropriate conditions) which supports pantomime. This is hypothesized to have provided the substrate for the development of protosign, a combinatorially open repertoire of manual gestures, which then provides the scaffolding for the emergence of protospeech (which thus owes little to nonhuman vocalizations), with protosign and protospeech then developing in an expanding spiral. It is argued that these stages involve biological evolution of both brain and body. By contrast, it is argued that the progression from protosign and protospeech to languages with full-blown syntax and compositional semantics was a historical phenomenon in the development of Homo sapiens, involving few if any further biological changes. Key Words: gestures; hominids; language evolution; mirror system; neurolinguistics; primates; protolanguage; sign language; speech; vocalization. (shrink)

Here, we argue that any neurobiological theory based on an experience/function division cannot be empirically confirmed or falsified and is thus outside the scope of science. A ‘perfect experiment’ illustrates this point, highlighting the unbreachable boundaries of the scientific study of consciousness. We describe a more nuanced notion of cognitive access that captures personal experience without positing the existence of inaccessible conscious states. Finally, we discuss the criteria necessary for forming and testing a falsifiable theory of consciousness.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 1996. In hundreds of articles by experts from around the world, and in overviews and "road maps" prepared by the editor, The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networkscharts the immense progress made in recent years in many specific areas related to two great questions: How does the brain work? and How can we build intelligent machines? While many books have appeared on limited aspects of one subfield or another of brain theory and neural networks, the (...) Handbookcovers the entire sweep of topics—from detailed models of single neurons, analyses of a wide variety of biological neural networks, and connectionist studies of psychology and language, to mathematical analyses of a variety of abstract neural networks, and technological applications of adaptive, artificial neural networks. The excitement, and the frustration, of these topics is that they span such a broad range of disciplines including mathematics, statistical physics and chemistry, neurology and neurobiology, and computer science and electrical engineering as well as cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and philosophy. Thus, much effort has gone into making the Handbookaccessible to readers with varied backgrounds while still providing a clear view of much of the recent, specialized research in specific topics. The heart of the book, part III, comprises of 267 original articles by leaders in the various fields, arranged alphabetically by title. Parts I and II, written by the editor, are designed to help readers orient themselves to this vast range of material. Part I, Background, introduces several basic neural models, explains how the present study of brain theory and neural networks integrates brain theory, artificial intelligence, and cognitive psychology, and provides a tutorial on the concepts essential for understanding neural networks as dynamic, adaptive systems. Part II, Road Maps, provides entry into the many articles of part III through an introductory "Meta-Map" and twenty-three road maps, each of which tours all the Part III articles on the chosen theme. (shrink)

Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 1996. In hundreds of articles by experts from around the world, and in overviews and "road maps" prepared by the editor, The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks charts the immense progress made in recent years in many specific areas related to great questions: How does the brain work? How can we build intelligent machines? While many books discuss limited aspects of one subfield or another of brain theory and neural networks, the Handbook covers the (...) entire sweep of topics—from detailed models of single neurons, analyses of a wide variety of biological neural networks, and connectionist studies of psychology and language, to mathematical analyses of a variety of abstract neural networks, and technological applications of adaptive, artificial neural networks. Expository material makes the book accessible to readers with varied backgrounds while still offering a clear view of the recent, specialized research on specific topics. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 10, October 2022.

Although our subjective impression is of a richly detailed visual world, numerous empirical results suggest that the amount of visual information observers can perceive and remember at any given moment is limited. How can our subjective impressions be reconciled with these objective observations? Here, we answer this question by arguing that, although we see more than the handful of objects, claimed by prominent models of visual attention and working memory, we still see far less than we think we do. Taken (...) together, we argue that these considerations resolve the apparent conflict between our subjective impressions and empirical data on visual capacity, while also illuminating the nature of the representations underlying perceptual experience. (shrink)

Are thought experiments nothing but arguments? I argue that it is not possible to make sense of the historical trajectory of certain thought experiments if one takes them to be arguments. Einstein and Bohr disagreed about the outcome of the clock-in-the-box thought experiment, and so they reconstructed it using different arguments. This is to be expected whenever scientists disagree about a thought experiment's outcome. Since any such episode consists of two arguments but just one thought experiment, the thought experiment cannot (...) be the arguments. (shrink)

Intermediate constructs are required as bridges between complex behaviors and realistic models of neural circuitry. For cognitive scientists in general, schemas are the appropriate functional units; brain theorists can work with neural layers as units intermediate between structures subserving schemas and small neural circuits.After an account of different levels of analysis, we describe visuomotor coordination in terms of perceptual schemas and motor schemas. The interest of schemas to cognitive science in general is illustrated with the example of perceptual schemas in (...) high-level vision and motor schemas in the control of dextrous hands.Rana computatrix, the computational frog, is introduced to show how one constructs an evolving set of model families to mediate flexible cooperation between theory and experiment. Rana computatrix may be able to do for the study of the organizational principles of neural circuitry what Aplysia has done for the study of subcellular mechanisms of learning. Approach, avoidance, and detour behavior in frogs and toads are analyzed in terms of interacting schemas. Facilitation and prey recognition are implemented as tectal-pretectal interactions, with the tectum modeled by an array of tectal columns. We show how layered neural computation enters into models of stereopsis and how depth schemas may involve the interaction of accommodation and binocular cues in anurans. (shrink)

The generality problem is widely considered to be a devastating objection to reliabilist theories of justification. My goal in this paper is to argue that a version of the generality problem applies to all plausible theories of justification. Assume that any plausible theory must allow for the possibility of reflective justification—S's belief, B, is justified on the basis of S's knowledge that she arrived at B as a result of a highly (but not perfectly) reliable way of reasoning, R. The (...) generality problem applies to all cases of reflective justification: Given that is the product of a process-token that is an instance of indefinitely many belief-forming process-types (or BFPTs), why is the reliability of R, rather than the reliability of one of the indefinitely many other BFPTs, relevant to B's justificatory status? This form of the generality problem is restricted because it applies only to cases of reflective justification. But unless it is solved, the generality problem haunts all plausible theories of justification, not just reliabilist ones. (shrink)

A new, dramatically updated edition of the classic resource on the constantly evolving fields of brain theory and neural networks.

My essay, “Multi-modal argumentation” was published in the journal, _Philosophy of the Social Sciences,_ in 1994. This information appeared again in my book, _Coalescent argumentation_ in 1997. In the ensuing twenty years, there have been many changes in argumentation theory, and I would like to take this opportunity to examine my now middle-aged theory in light of the developments in our discipline. I will begin by relating how a once keen intended lawyer and then formal logician ended up in argumentation (...) theory. (If you do not care to read this bit of autobiography, skip to Section 2). (shrink)

Epistemic responsibility involves at least two central ideas. (V) To be epistemically responsible is to display the virtue(s) epistemic internalists take to be central to justification (e.g., coherence, having good reasons, fitting the evidence). (C) In normal (non-skeptical)circumstances and in thelong run, epistemic responsibility is strongly positively correlated with reliability. Sections 1 and 2 review evidence showing that for a wide range of real-world problems, the most reliable, tractable reasoning strategies audaciously flout the internalist''s epistemic virtues. In Section 3, I (...) argue that these results force us to give up either (V), our current conception of what it is to be epistemically responsible, or (C) the responsibility-reliability connection. I will argue that we should relinquish (V). This is likely to reshape our epistemic practices. It will force us to alter our epistemic judgments about certain instances of reasoning, to endorse some counterintuitive epistemic prescriptions, and to rethink what it is for cognitive agents to be epistemically responsible. (shrink)

If a brain is uploaded into a computer, will consciousness continue in digital form or will it end forever when the brain is destroyed? Philosophers have long debated such dilemmas and classify them as questions about personal identity. There are currently three main theories of personal identity: biological, psychological, and closest continuer theories. None of these theories can successfully address the questions posed by the possibility of uploading. I will argue that uploading requires us to adopt a new theory of (...) identity, psychological branching identity. Psychological branching identity states that consciousness will continue as long as there is continuity in psychological structure. What differentiates this from psychological identity is that it allows identity to continue in multiple selves. According to branching identity, continuity of consciousness will continue in both the original brain and the upload after nondestructive uploading. Branching identity can also resolve long standing questions about split-brain syndrome and can provide clear predictions about identity in even the most difficult cases imagined by philosophers. (shrink)

Michael Peters, Sonja Arndt & Marek TesarThis is a collective writing experiment of PESA members, including its Executive Committee, asking questions of the Philosophy of Education in a New Key. Co...

First-ever comprehensive introduction to the major new subject of quantum computing and quantum information.

Thirty years ago, I elaborated on a position that could be seen as a compromise between an "extreme," symbol-based AI, and a "neurochemical reductionism" in AI. The present article recalls aspects of the espoused framework of schema theory that, it suggested, could provide a better bridge from human psychology to brain theory than that offered by the symbol systems of A. Newell and H. A. Simon.

Computational modeling of the macaque brain grounds hypotheses on the brain of LCA-m. Elaborations thereof provide a brain model for LCA-c. The Mirror System Hypothesis charts further steps via imitation and pantomime to protosign and protolanguage on the path to a "language-ready brain" in Homo sapiens, with the path to speech being indirect. The material poses new challenges for both experimentation and modeling.

This article is concerned with developing a philosophical approach to a number of significant changes to academic publishing, and specifically the global journal knowledge system wrought by a range of new digital technologies that herald the third age of the journal as an electronic, interactive and mixed-media form of scientific communication. The paper emerges from an Editors' Collective, a small New Zealand-based organisation comprised of editors and reviewers of academic journals mostly in the fields of education and philosophy. The paper (...) is the result of a collective writing process. (shrink)