The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has recently issued a revised "Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants" (IFAC Code). As a requirement for membership in IFAC, a national accounting organization must either adopt the IFAC Code or adopt a code of conduct that is not "less stringent" than the IFAC Code. In this paper, we examine the extent to which 158 national accounting organizations have adopted the revised IFAC Code as their own. Our results indicate that 80 of our sample (...) organizations have adopted the IFAC Code (sometimes with minor modifications), while the remaining 78 opted not to utilize the model IFAC Code. We then test the hypothesis that national accounting organizations in lower income economies would be less likely to adopt the IFAC Code than those in high income economies. Our results do not support the hypothesis. We argue that one potential reason for such a finding is that adopting the IFAC Code may be a cost effective means of adopting a code of ethics for organizations in lower income economies. (shrink)

Interest in thought experiments (TEs) derives from the paradox: “How can findings that carry conviction result from a new experiment conducted entirely within the head?” Historical studies have established the importance of TEs in science but have proposed disparate hypotheses concerning the source of knowledge in TEs, ranging from empiricist to rationalist accounts. This article analyzes TEs in think‐aloud protocols of scientifically trained experts to examine more fine‐grained information about their use. Some TEs appear powerful enough to discredit an existing (...) theory—a disconfirmatory purpose. In addition, confirmatory and generative purposes were identified for other TEs. One can also use details in transcript data, including imagery reports and gestures, to provide evidence for a central role played by imagistic simulations in many TEs, and to suggest that these simulations can generate new knowledge using several sources, including the “extended application” of perceptual motor schemas, implicit prior knowledge, and spatial reasoning operations, in contrast to formal arguments. These sources suggest what it means for TEs to be grounded in embodied processes that can begin to explain the paradox above. This leads to a rationalistic view of TEs as using productive internal reasoning, but the view also acknowledges the historical role that experience with the world can play in forming certain schemas used in TEs. Understanding such processes could help provide a foundation for developing a larger model of scientific investigation processes grounded on imagistic simulation (Clement, 2008). (shrink)

Reasoning patterns found in Galileo’s treatise on machines, On Mechanics, are compared with patterns identified in case studies of scientifically trained experts thinking aloud, and many similarities are found. At one level the primary patterns identified are ordered analogy sequences and special diagrammatic techniques to support them. At a deeper level I develop constructs to describe patterns that can support embodied, imagistic, mental simulations as a central underlying process. Additionally, a larger hypothesized pattern of ‘progressive imagistic generalization’—Galileo’s development of a (...) model or mechanism that becomes more and more general with each machine while still being imagistically projectable into many machines—provides a way to think about his progress toward a modern explanatory model of torque. By unpacking his arguments, we gain an appreciation of his skillful ability to foster imagistic processes underlying scientific thinking. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a workshop held in January 2013 to begin the process of establishing standards for e-learning programmes in the ethics of research involving human participants that could serve as the basis of their evaluation by individuals and groups who want to use, recommend or accredit such programmes. The standards that were drafted at the workshop cover the following topics: designer/provider qualifications, learning goals, learning objectives, content, methods, assessment of participants and assessment of the course. The (...) authors invite comments on the draft standards and eventual endorsement of a final version by all stakeholders. (shrink)

The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has issued a revised “Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants” (IFAC Code). The IFAC Code is intended to be a model code of ethics for national accounting organizations throughout the world. Prior research demonstrates that approximately 50% of IFAC member organizations have adopted the IFAC Code as their organizational code of conduct. There is therefore empirical evidence that international convergence of accounting ethical standards is occurring. We employ Hofstede’s ( 2008 , http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_dimensions.php ) cultural (...) dimensions in an attempt to empirically explain accounting organizations’ decisions about whether to adopt the IFAC Code or to retain their organization-specific code. Our results indicate that accounting organizations in cultures with high levels of Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance are less likely to adopt the model IFAC Code. Organizations in high Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance societies are therefore less likely to surrender the setting of ethical standards to an outside, international organization. (shrink)

Background With growth of genomics research in Africa, concern has arisen about comprehension and adequacy of informed consent given the highly technical terms used in this field. We therefore decided to study whether there are linguistic and cultural concepts used to communicate heritability of characters, traits and diseases in an indigenous African population. Methods We conducted Focus Group Discussions among 115 participants stratified by sex, age and socio-economic status and Key Informant Interviews among 25 stakeholders and Key Opinion Leaders among (...) Yoruba living in Ibadan, Nigeria. We used Atlas-ti v.8.3.17 software to analyze the data, using thematic approach. Results The study participants identified several linguistic and cultural concepts including words, proverbs, and aphorisms that are used to describe heritable characters, traits and diseases in their local dialect. These included words that can be appropriated to describe dominant and recessive traits, variations in penetrance and dilution of strength of heritable characteristics by time and inter-marriage. They also suggested that these traits are transmitted by “blood”, and specific partner’s blood may be stronger than the other regardless of sex. Conclusions Indigenous Yoruba populations have words and linguistic concepts that describe the heritability of characters, traits and diseases which can be appropriated to improve comprehension and adequacy of informed consent in genomics research. Our methods are openly available and can be used by genomic researchers in other African communities. (shrink)

This dissertation argues that the current tendency to define liberal constitutionalism in terms of the impersonal and formalistic ideals of the rule of law diverges from early liberal theories of constitutionalism, which were sensitive to the occasional need for extra-legal discretionary exercises of power to deal with the unpredictable contingencies of politics. This understanding of politics shaped the constitutional and political thought of liberal thinkers from John Locke, David Hume, and William Blackstone to Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and other (...) Federalists who defended the extraordinary powers of the American presidency. Since these early liberals recognized that it would sometimes be necessary for an executive to perform extraordinary actions in response to unforeseeable events, they were reluctant to place excessive legal checks on executive power. Consequently, they emphasized the importance of limiting executive power to those with "fit characters." In particular, they looked to those politico-moral virtues associated with republicanism to supplement and enhance the constitutional machinery of government that was designed with the ordinary course of politics in mind. Although early liberal theorists and the designers of the American Constitution abandoned many of the core principles of republicanism, particularly its reliance on a virtuous and active citizenry as the best guarantee of free government, they preserved a place for distinctively republican virtues such as patriotism and disinterestedness in the office of the executive. In fact, the Federalists made the American presidency the primary repository of republican virtue in the new government. The first century of liberal constitutional theorists was actually skeptical of the ability of impersonal institutional devices such as the separation of powers and checks and balances to secure a free and effective government without the presence of fit characters. Since formal institutions are imperfect and often inadequate---both in dealing with political contingencies and in checking the executive---these thinkers supplemented legal and institutional safeguards with character requirements to minimize potential abuses of largely indeterminate executive powers irreducible to law. An abiding conviction that uncertainty is the only certainty in politics led them to prefer flexible approaches rather than the rigid formulas in theorizing constitutionalism. (shrink)

Of the practices John Cassian brings from Egyptian desert elders to southern Gallic monks, his scriptural hermeneutics best reflects the dynamic link between exegesis and askēsis, reflection and action, and authority and agency. His four-fold method reinforces the view that scripture is absolutely authoritative but incredibly obscure and therefore requires interpretation. Riddled with contradictions, acts of violence, and the plainly nonsensical, scripture provides foundations in early Christianity only through the complex interplay of interpretation, authority, and power. To read exegesis (...) only as an intellectual exercise or assertion of power, however, neglects its relation to other forms of askēsis in Cassian’s Conferences and Institutes. For Cassian, scriptural interpretation renders lived practice and practical knowledge inseparable from contemplative knowledge. Cassian’s view of scriptural meditātiō is shaped in late antique Christian milieus where interpretive reading practices shape ascetic habits alongside practices of manual labor, fasting, and prayer. For Cassian and the Egyptian desert ascetics with whom he trained, scriptural interpretation does not lead to keen description or reflection alone, but must impact one’s practices, one’s tropos, one’s very way of life. Such a perspective allows us to see not only the relevance of Cassian’s ethics to Christian thought and practice, but also to approach Cassian’s texts with a critical eye for how they enable reflection on contemporary religious ethics beyond the particulars of Christian predicates. (shrink)

This year is being celebrated by a large number of our fellow-countrymen as the centenary of a movement, associated with the name of the University of Oxford, of which, although in its first stage it might easily be mistaken—and has often been mistaken—for a mere wave of theological and ecclesiastical reaction within the Established Church of England, the attentive historian of the nineteenth century must take account as in fact a very powerful influence in the religious and, no less really (...) though to a less degree, in the social and political life of the whole nation. Considerable, however, as is the importance which may justly be attributed in other respects to what is known as the Oxford Movement, the professed student of philosophy may be excused if he is chiefly struck by the apparent remoteness of its original leaders from the currents of speculative thought characteristic of the period in which it began its course. There were perhaps among them only two who can be named as contributors to philosophical literature in the technical sense now commonly borne by the term “philosophical”; and the contributions even of these two can scarcely be said to have taken their place among the works to which an ordinary teacher of philosophy would be likely to direct the attention of his pupils. To these two, however, John Henry Newman and William George Ward, I propose to devote here a few pages which may be found not without interest to readers of Philosophy. (shrink)

In _Rawlsian Political Analysis: Rethinking the Microfoundations of Social Science, _Paul Clements develops a new, morally grounded model of political and social analysis as a critique of and improvement on both neoclassical economics and rational choice theory. What if practical reason is based not only on interests and ideas of the good, as these theories have it, but also on principles and sentiments of right? The answer, Clements argues, requires a radical reorientation of social science from the idea of interests (...) to the idea of social justice. According to Clements, systematic weaknesses in neoclassical economics and rational choice theory are due to their limited model of choice. According to such theories in the utilitarian tradition, all our practical decisions aim to maximize the satisfaction of our interests. These neo-utilitarian approaches focus on how we promote our interests, but Clements argues, our ideas of right, cognitively represented in principles, contribute independently and no less fundamentally to our practical decisions. The most significant challenge to utilitarianism in the last half century is found in John Rawls’s _Theory of Justice _and _Political Liberalism_, in which Rawls builds on Kant's concept of practical reason. Clements extends Rawls's moral theory and his critique of utilitarianism by arguing for social analysis based on the Kantian and Rawlsian model of choice. To illustrate the explanatory power of his model, he presents three detailed case studies: a program analysis of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, a political economy analysis of the causes of poverty in the Indian state of Bihar, and a problem-based analysis of the ethics and politics of climate change. He concludes by exploring the broad implications of social analysis grounded in a concept of social justice. “Paul Clements’s _Rawlsian Political Analysis _mounts an important intervention into the philosophy of the social sciences, challenging the tired fact/value, empirical/normative binaries that continue to impoverish social analysis. His insistence that social analysis must engage both facts and norms, the empirical and the normative, the good and the right, interest and principle—and that empirical social scientists must engage constructively on questions of autonomy and social justice—is noble and ultimately essential if social science is to justify its place in the years to come.” —_Fonna Forman-Barzilai, University of California, San Diego_. (shrink)

In his masterly book Christ and Culture H. Richard Niebuhr identified five main attitudes which Christians have taken towards secular culture. The first emphasizes the opposition between Christ and culture. In the New Testament it is best seen in Revelation and in the First Epistle of John. But it appears in its most radical form in Tertullian, though even he is not wholly consistent. Men are under illusions from their very culture . Graeco-Roman society was shot through and through (...) with what Tertullian regarded as superstition and idolatry, as well as immorality. So Tertullian repudiated political life, military service, many aspects of commerce, philosophy and the arts. (shrink)

: Three unpublished ayyubid letters are presented here. They are addressed to ascetics, fuqarāʾ and ṣūfī, residing in the great mosque of Damascus, and devoted to reading the Qurʾān and praying at the tomb of prophet Zakariyyāʾ. This veneered shrine or ziyāra had been ignored until now, although it was known and it is common knowledge nowadays, that some rituals took place around the location where the head of John the Baptist, known in the lands of Islamic world as (...) Yaḥyā b. Zakariyyāʾ, was kept. Our research seeks to present aspects of the rituals held in the tomb of Zakariyāʾ, arguing that it was initially established with an impetus from Saladin, then thrived under his ayyubid successors, to start dwindling until it was abandoned by the end of the mamluk era. (shrink)

The children were nestled all snug in their beds.While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.Clement Moore's cherished ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas captures the hopes, dreams and visions...

William of Ockham was a medieval English philosopher and theologian. In 1328 Ockham turned away from 'pure' philosophy and theology to polemic. From that year until the end of his life he worked to overthrow what he saw as the tyranny of Pope John XXII and of his successors Popes Benedict XII and Clement VI. This campaign led him into questions of ecclesiology and political philosophy. The Dialogus purports to be a transcript made by a mature student of (...) lengthy discussions between himself and a university master about the various opinions of the learned on the matters disputed between John XXII and the dissident Franciscans. (shrink)

Few twentieth century novelists have been subjected to as exhaustive and self-confident interpretations of the ultimate meaning of their work as was Franz Kafka. Veritable regiments of men of letters, psychoanalysts, sociologists, philosophers, and just plain busybodies followed the urge to formulate theories on Kafka’s concern with the alienation of Western man. Personal friends like Max Brod, dramatizers of the loveless world of The Trial, André Gide and Jean-Louis Barrault, analyzers of parental stunting of the child psyche like Josef Rattner, (...) observers of Kafka’s Austro-Bohemian world like Pavel Eisner and Peter Demetz, investigators of traditional themes in Kafka’s fiction—notably of their Hebraic and Chasidic ingredients—like André Nemeth and Hartmut Binder, hunters of allegorical and parabolic semantics like Norbert Fuerst and Clements Heselhaus, all seem to share one common trait in their vastly differing approaches: a singular disrespect for the frequent hints made by the author himself as to his ultimate objectives. (shrink)

This study considers Newman’s sermon—“On the Nature of the Future Promise”—which he preached on 4 September 1825 at St. Clement’s Church, Oxford—likely with his mother and sisters present in the congregation; in addition to treating Newman’s style of preaching and Evangelical theology, this sermon’s theological and pastoral dimensions are also examined.

This study considers Newman’s sermon—“On the Nature of the Future Promise”—which he preached on 4 September 1825 at St. Clement’s Church, Oxford—likely with his mother and sisters present in the congregation; in addition to treating Newman’s style of preaching and Evangelical theology, this sermon’s theological and pastoral dimensions are also examined.

Newcomers and more experienced feminist theorists will welcome this even-handed survey of the care/justice debate within feminist ethics. Grace Clement clarifies the key terms, examines the arguments and assumptions of all sides to the debate, and explores the broader implications for both practical and applied ethics. Readers will appreciate her generous treatment of the feminine, feminist, and justice-based perspectives that have dominated the debate.Clement also goes well beyond description and criticism, advancing the discussion through the incorporation of a (...) broad range of insights into a new integration of the values of care and justice. Care, Autonomy, and Justice marks a major step forward in our understanding of feminist ethics. It is both direct and helpful enough to work as an introduction for students and insightful and original enough to make it necessary reading for scholars. (shrink)

Thanks to his unsurpassed eye and his fearless willingness to take a stand, Clement Greenberg (1909 1994) became one of the giants of 20th century art criticism a writer who set the terms of critical discourse from the moment he burst onto the scene with his seminal essays Avant Garde and Kitsch (1939) and Towards a Newer Laocoon (1940). In this work, which gathers previously uncollected essays and a series of seminars delivered at Bennington in 1971, Greenberg provides his (...) most expansive statement of his views on taste and quality in art, arguing for an esthetic that flies in the face of current art world fashions. Greenberg insists despite the attempts from Marcel Duchamp onwards to escape the jurisdiction of taste by producing an art so disjunctive that it cannot be judged that taste is inexorable. He argues that standards of quality in art, the artist's responsibility to seek out the hardest demands of a medium, and the critic's responsibility to discriminate, are essential conditions for great art. The obsession with innovation the epidemic of newness leads, in Greenbergs view, to the boringness of so much avant garde art. He discusses the interplay of expectation and surprise in aesthetic experience, and the exalted consciousness produced by great art. Homemade Esthetics allows us particularly in the transcribed seminar sessions, never before published to watch the critics mind at work, defending (and at times reconsidering) his theories. His views, often controversial, are the record of a lifetime of looking at and thinking about art as intensely as anyone ever has. (shrink)