In this paper, we look at the new frontier of e-commerce, the ethical challenges it is facing and discuss some of the problems encountered and some of the solutions that are evolving. The areas of concern include the impact on other businesses, investors and consumers. Problems regarding financial reporting, intellectual property and privacy are discussed.

This article is aimed at introducing a French discourse analysis model, e.g. the ‘star model’, initiated by the LAA team led by Robert Vion in Aix-en-Provence, to English-speaking researchers. It will be argued that language activity is multi-dimensional and can be traced at various heterogeneous levels of speech productions belonging to macro as well as micro orders. Speakers achieve different varieties of positioning which result in negotiating an interactional space within a pre-given situation. The model is precisely designed to offer (...) a unified and comprehensive view of such heterogeneous phenomena in constant interconnection. In this study, we also intend to illustrate our approach through the analysis of two different corpora. Speakers’ strategies under extreme conditions will be analysed; the various sequences used were taken from a special corpus which we were asked to study as part of a national research programme. In order to illustrate interactional space shifts, we will also use the transcript of a meeting which took place between a patient and a medical investigator in a hospital in Marseilles. (shrink)

Many have preached the need for business schools to "teach" ethics, but very few have considered that business schools should also adopt and implement their own codes. The authors' previous research indicates that there is a perceived need for a code of ethics for business schools. Currently, relatively few schools have in fact adopted codes of ethics applicable to all the constituents of the institution. Proposals made to businesses to help them determine which values should be included in a corporate (...) code do not appear to adequately address the distinctive issues faced in an academic environment. In an earlier survey, the authors identified general principles of conduct that seemed to encompass the values expressed by the respondents. Relying on research that has indicated that ideally a code of ethics should be inspirational and value oriented rather than prescriptive and proscriptive, the authors herein propose ten values and correlating definitions that would provide a framework for a business school code of ethics. (shrink)

Traditionally, certified public accountants (CPAs) have served a unique role in the world of commerce and the profession of accounting. They perform an attest function and thereby serve as the chief providers of relevant, high quality accounting information to the decision making public. CPAs are licensed practitioners, who as expert independent accountants express opinions about an entity'sfinancial statements. Their license provides them with the exclusive right to perform this attest function. This monoploy relies on the concept of independence that is (...) the normative standard of accountancy. It is this perceived independence of auditors which provides credibility, reliability and trust in the financial accounting information upon which stakeholders depend to make informed decisions. Now, however, we see the environment in which CPAs operate undergoing rapid change. Both the globalization of business operations and technological advances have radically changed how and where accountants work and the speed at which things happen. The very nature of accounting information services is evolving; moving from a concentration on audits to an increasing reliance on consulting and assurance services. New ethical issues have been raised by this confluence of changes in the accounting environment. Noteworthy is that the application of the principle of independence by CPAs has been called into question by no other than the SEC. Are those stakeholders who depend upon the independence of CPAs at risk? The influence of insiders has significantly increased as accounting firms perform multiple tasks for the same clients. This paper discusses the different groups who can potentially impair the independence of auditors and the steps that are being taken to enhance the "independence" of the auditors. (shrink)

The literature on quantum logic emphasizes that the algebraic structures involved with orthodox quantum mechanics are non distributive. In this paper we develop a particular algebraic structure, the quasi-lattice ( $${\mathfrak{I}}$$ -lattice), which can be modeled by an algebraic structure built in quasi-set theory $${\mathfrak{Q}}$$. This structure is non distributive and involve indiscernible elements. Thus we show that in taking into account indiscernibility as a primitive concept, the quasi-lattice that ‘naturally’ arises is non distributive.

Concepts are the building blocks of higher-order cognition and consciousness. Building on Conceptual Spaces Theory (CST) and proceeding from the assumption that concepts are inherently dynamic, this paper provides historical context to and significantly elaborates the previously offered Iterative Subdivision Model (ISDM) with the goal of pushing it toward empirical testability. The paper describes how agents in continuous interaction with their environment adopt an intentional orientation, estimate the utility of the concept(s) applicable to action in the current context, engage in (...) practical action, and adopt any new concepts that emerge: a largely pre-intellectual cycle that repeats essentially without interruption over the conceptual agent’s lifetime. This paper elaborates utility optimization by establishing three constraints on concept formation/evaluation – non-redundancy, distinctiveness, and proportionality – embedding them in a quasi-mathematical model intended for development into a formal logic. The notion of a distinctor – a quality dimension of the conceptual space in focus at any given time, used for making what we call a difference distinction – is key. The primary contribution of the revised ISDM is the way it relates concepts to action via utility optimization/actualization and the way it describes the emergence of quality dimensions through trial-by-action (trial and error), something previous presentations of CST have failed to address. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Sammelband analysiert die diversen Formen einer ideologisch motivierten Instrumentalisierung von Meister Eckharts Mystik in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus und bietet darüber hinaus auch ganz neues, bislang noch unveröffentlichtes Quellenmaterial zu den institutionellen Hintergründen der Eckhart-Rezeption im Dritten Reich. This volume analyses the various forms of ideological instrumentalization Meister Eckhart’s mysticism has been subject to during the era of National Socialism. Furthermore, the volume includes hitherto unpublished source material concerning the institutional background of Eckhart’s reception in the Third Reich.

Recently, several researchers and philosophers argued that clinical research trials are not therapy. Their position is based on foundational research ethics documents, such as the Belmont Report, on conceptual analysis, and on the general way clinical trials are conducted. After examining and rejecting these arguments, we claim that good research is consistent with good therapy; that often trials are good therapy; and that a blanket attack on clinical trials as non-therapeutic creates a research misconception. This misconception is potentially harmful because (...) it could weaken trial recruitment, could adversely affect funding for trials, and could overturn needed moral safeguards on therapeutic trials. Our more careful and accurate analysis of the nature of clinical trials can avoid such problems. (shrink)

This special issue brings together contributions from nine scholars who have been working at the frontiers of the comparative study of risk. Most of the papers that follow use a cross-national approach to investigate public attitudes to risk in a broad range of settings including Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England, and the United States. Two of the authors represented here adopt more creative interpretations for carrying out comparative studies that reach considerably beyond conventional methodologies of country-level contrasts. One contributor highlights the (...) temporal dimensions of novel forms of environmental uncertainty and a second selection, grounded in the sociology of language, compares the different objectives that lay people seek to satisfy when they speak about risk. In this sense, this issue provides a farrago of perspectives on the most befitting way to exploit the utility of comparative methodologies.Political scientists interested in the effects of different regulatory regimes and systems of governance have been responsible for most comparative risk research conducted to date. The papers in this issue depart from this tradition and instead draw on insights derived from social theory. There has been over the past decade a dramatic upswelling of interest in risk among theoretically-inclined sociologists and several writers have suggested that a pervasive sense of anxiety is a central feature of the current phase of modernity (e.g., Giddens, 1990; Beck, 1992). This collection represents an initial attempt to situate these recondite impressions in distinct contexts and to scrutinise them from a variety of comparative perspectives. (shrink)

Over the past decade risk society theory has become increasingly prominent within the field of environmental social theory. This perspective contends that conventional political divisions based on class are becoming less salient and are giving way to a politics predicated upon the distribution of risk. There is much in risk society theory, especially its central contention that public anxieties about high consequence-low probability events undermine the legitimacy of science, that has a distinctly German stamp. Through a comparative analysis of how (...) national context has differently shaped science as a public epistemology this paper suggests we should tread carefully in moving to accept the general applicability of this theoretical approach. (shrink)

This article was made possible thanks to a research grant by C.I.R.I.T. . The research took place in Birmingham under the direction of Prof. N.J.H. Dent, Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham. I would like to thank him and the other members of the Department for the kindness and support I was given.

What are the conditions under which one biological object is a part of another biological object? This paper answers this question by developing a general, systematic account of biological parthood. I specify two criteria for biological parthood. Substantial Spatial Inclusionrequires biological parts to be spatially located inside or in the region that the natural boundary of t he biological whole occupies. Compositional Relevance captures the fact that a biological part engages in a biological process that must make a necessary contribution (...) to a condition that is minimally sufficient to one or more of the characteristic behaviors of the biological whole. Instead of emphasizing the diversity of part-whole relations in the biological world, this paper asks what biological part-whole relations have in common and what constrains their existence, in general. After presenting the two criteria for biological parthood I discuss in how far my account can cope with hard cases (e.g., redundant parts) and I reveal the merits and limits of monism. (shrink)

This book investigates modern global civilization, offering an alternative to post-colonial theories and the "multiple modernities" approach (as well as the civilizational theory linked to it). It argues that modernity has become a global civilization that is heterogeneous and intertwined with other civilizations, and also aims at a renewal of critical theory that is not US-centric and Eurocentric, focusing instead on China, South Asia (India) and Latin America (Brazil). Dealing with the themes of centre-periphery relations, complexity (including culture and religion), (...) democracy and emancipatory possibilities, this book is based on general theoretical ideas such as collective subjectivity, the interplay of memory and creativity, and the concept of "modernizing moves," so as to deal with historical contingency. (shrink)

Introduction -- Vicissitudes and possibilities of critical theory today -- Global modernity : levels of analysis and conceptual strategies -- Existential social questions, developmental trends and modernity -- History, sociology and modernity -- Realism, trend-concepts and the modern state -- Family, modernization and sociological theory -- The basic forms of social interaction -- The imaginary and politics in modernity: the trajectory -- Critical social theory and developmental trends, emancipation -- References -- Index.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 213 Seiten: 473-491.

Mary Shepherd's An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, first published in 1824, was a pioneering work in metaphysics and epistemology. Together with her 1827 Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, they make her one of the most important philosophers of her era. Although widely neglected by the history of philosophy in the decades after her death, her works have recently begun to attract the attention and sustained study they deserve. In the course of her (...) writings, Shepherd offers trenchant and detailed rebuttals of the arguments and conclusions of many prominent predecessors-including George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Lawrence, and especially David Hume-but she is no merely negative thinker. On the contrary, her critiques are always in the service of her own distinctive and highly original doctrines, which are of striking contemporary interest. Appearing two hundred years after its original publication, this is the first full modern edition of her first book, which presents and defends the theory of causation and scientific knowledge that constitutes the cornerstone of her entire philosophy. The edition includes an extensive introduction and scholarly notes throughout that provide historical and philosophical context while explaining the central ideas of the work. It also includes Shepherd's two essays published in 1828 and all of her known letters-all but one of them published here for the first time-which shed significant additional light on her philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Anger has potential epistemic value in the way that it can facilitate a process of our coming to have knowledge and understanding regarding the issue about which we are angry. The nature of anger, however, may nevertheless be such that it ultimately undermines this very process. Common non-philosophical complaints about anger, for instance, often target the angry person as being somehow irrational, where an unformulated assumption is that her anger undermines her capacity to rationally engage with the issue about which (...) she is angry. Call this assumption the charge of emotional irrationality regarding anger. Such a charge is pernicious when levelled at the anger of those in positions of marginalisation or oppression, where it can threaten to silence voices on the very issue of the injustices that they face. In this paper I thus provide a much-needed interrogation of this charge. Firstly, and drawing on empirical literature on the effects of anger on decision-making, I flesh out the charge and why it poses a threat to how the epistemic value of anger has been defended. Secondly, I argue that the charge of emotional irrationality regarding anger can nevertheless be unwarranted, at least within a common context of political anger. (shrink)

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