Although the method of Belgian budgeting and controlling has considerably improved during recent years, there still remain a lot of shortcommings such as: frequently late introduction into Parliament of the budget, inadequate information about expenditure, rarely application of zero base budgeting aften combined with techniques which embellish the budget. Debudgeting is the most important camouflage technique. Debudgeting appears in different manners and influences not only the height but also the evolution of the budget deficit. An improvement of the budgeting technique (...) in Belgium doesn't ask fundamental changes of actual law. Just a switch in applicating the law according to the original spirit and interpretation of actual legislation, would be satisfactory to obtain an efficient and effective budget-policy. (shrink)

Last October the German Ambassador to Britain delivered the annual Gresham Special Lecture in Gresham College in the City of London. The text of His Excellency's lecture is reproduced here with permission.

Last October the German Ambassador to Britain delivered the annual Gresham Special Lecture in Gresham College in the City of London. The text of His Excellency's lecture is reproduced here with permission.

English summary: Marc Andre Wiegand analyzes the neo-Kantian premises of Gustav Radbruch's legal philosophy.

This timely Research Handbook offers significant insights into an understudied subject, bringing together a broad range of socio-legal studies of medicine to help answer complex and interdisciplinary questions about global health - a major challenge of our time. Interdisciplinary chapters explore both how the terrain of medicine can generate new questions about law, regulation and the state, and how the law intersects with health and medicine at every level. Bringing together leading international scholars, the Research Handbook assembles concrete case studies (...) to suggest avenues for further research on socio-legal inquiries, such as the construction of disorders by law, the reparation of injuries, and how race and gender impact justice. The Research Handbook for Socio-Legal Studies of Medicine and Health will be an inspiring read for researchers, academics and graduate students in the fields of health law, socio-legal studies, and gender and sexuality. (shrink)

Dem Absurden ins Auge sehen - das ist eine Herausforderung, die mit Entzweiung, Entfremdung und demzufolge mit großer Anspannung und Anstrengung einhergeht. In solchen Momenten entgleitet uns die Welt und wir stehen, so Albert Camus, vor der alles entscheidenden Frage: Selbstmord oder Freiheit. Der vorliegende Band verhandelt Bedrohungen und Gefahren ebenso wie Potenziale und Freiheiten des Absurden. Stimmen aus Philosophie, Erziehungswissenschaft, Literatur, Kunst, Medizin und Wirtschaftswissenschaft machen dabei deutlich: Das Absurde betrifft uns alle.

Alfonso Monsalve Solórzano: Colombia: democracia y paz. Medellín, Fondo Editorial Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, 1999, pp. 378.

Surrogacy and adoption are both family-making measures subject to extensive domestic and international regulation. In this nationally representative survey study (N = 1552), we explore public attitudes to various forms of surrogacy and adoption in the United Kingdom, in response to an early proposal to allow “double donor” surrogacy as part of the ongoing legal reform project. We sought to both gauge public moral support for adoption and surrogacy generally, the effect that prospective parents’ fertility had on this support, and (...) the extent to which the public would find equivalencies between “double donor” surrogacy (DDS) and planned private adoption (PPA) to be morally significant. Our findings indicate that whilst there is broad baseline support for all forms of adoption and surrogacy, this support increases significantly when one or both prospective parents are infertile. These findings also suggest that the language in which a family-making arrangement is characterized has a greater influence on moral support for the arrangement than practical features such as the biological relationship (or absence thereof) between one/both parents and the child. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 93-94.

Sustainable development (SD) – that is, “Development that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and aspirations” – can be pursued in many different ways. Stakeholder relations management (SRM) is one such way, through which corporations are confronted with economic, social, and environmental stakeholder claims. This paper lays the groundwork for an empirical analysis of the question of how far SD can be achieved through SRM. It describes the so-called SD–SRM (...) perspective as a distinctive research approach and shows how it relates to the wider body of stakeholder theory. Next, the concept of SD is operationalized for the microeconomic level with reference to important documents. Based on the ensuing SD framework, it is shown how SD and SRM relate to each other, and how the two concepts relate to other popular concepts such as Corporate Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility. The paper concludes that the significance of societal guiding models such as SD and of management approaches like CSR is strongly dependent on their footing in society. (shrink)

Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present is an authoritative and up-to-date survey of the entire history of skepticism. Divided chronologically into ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern, and contemporary periods, and featuring 50 specially-commissioned chapters from leading philosophers, this comprehensive volume is the first of its kind.

The works of the early Greek philosophers are not only a fundamental source for understanding archaic Greek culture and the whole of ancient philosophy, but also a perennially fresh resource that has stimulated Western thought until the present day. This nine-volume edition presents all the major fragments from the sixth to the fourth centuries BC.

The debate about scientific realism is concerned with the relation between our scientific theories and the world. Scientific realists argue that our best theories or components of those theories correspond to the world. Anti-realists deny such a correspondence. Traditionally, this central issue in the philosophy of science has been approached by focusing on the theories themselves (e.g., by looking at theory change or the underlying experimental context). I propose a relatively unexplored way to approach this old debate. In addition to (...) focusing on the theory, we should focus on the theorizer. More precisely, in order to determine on which component of a theory we should hinge a realist commitment, we should analyze the cognitive processes underlying scientific theorizing. In this paper I do just that. Drawing from recent developments in the cognitive sciences and evolutionary epistemology, I formulate some tentative conclusions. The aim of this paper is not so much to defend a particular position in the debate on scientific realism but to showcase the value of taking a cognitive perspective in the debate. (shrink)

Institutional ethics committees (IECs) are part of a growing phenomenon in the American health care system. Although a major force driving hospitals to establish IECs is the desire to resolve difficult clinical dilemmas in a quick and systematic way, in this paper we argue that such a goal is naive and, to some extent, misguided. We assess the growing trend of these committees, analyse the theoretical assumptions underlying their establishment, and evaluate their strengths and shortcomings. We show how the 'medical (...) consultation' model is often inappropriately applied to IECs and suggest that IECs must operate under a different framework. Finally, we argue that IECs should be valued for the process they facilitate, and not for the product that they are, often unreasonably, expected to deliver. (shrink)

Corruption involves greed, money, and risky decision-making. We explore the love of money, pay satisfaction, probability of risk, and dishonesty across cultures. Avaricious monetary aspiration breeds unethicality. Prospect theory frames decisions in the gains-losses domain and high-low probability. Pay dissatisfaction (in the losses domain) incites dishonesty in the name of justice at the individual level. The Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI, signals a high-low probability of getting caught for dishonesty at the country level. We theorize that decision-makers adopt avaricious love-of-money aspiration (...) as a lens and frame dishonesty in the gains-losses domain (pay satisfaction-dissatisfaction, Level 1) and high-low probability (CPI, Level 2) to maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity. We challenge the myth: Pay satisfaction mitigates dishonesty across nations consistently. Based on 6500 managers in 32 countries, our cross-level three-dimensional visualization offers the following discoveries. Under high aspiration conditions, pay dissatisfaction excites the highest- (third-highest) avaricious justice-seeking dishonesty in high (medium) CPI nations, supporting the certainty effect. However, pay satisfaction provokes the second-highest avaricious opportunity-seizing dishonesty in low CPI entities, sustaining the possibility effect—maximizing expected utility. Under low aspiration conditions, high pay satisfaction consistently leads to low dishonesty, demonstrating risk aversion—achieving ultimate serenity. We expand prospect theory from a micro and individual-level theory to a cross-level theory of monetary wisdom across 32 nations. We enhance the S-shaped Curve to three 3-D corruption surfaces across three levels of the global economic pyramid, providing novel insights into behavioral economics, business ethics, the environment, and responsibility. (shrink)

Monetary intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the dark side of monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics—dishonesty. Dishonesty, a risky prospect, involves cost–benefit analysis of self-interest. We frame good or bad barrels in the environmental context as a proxy of high or low probability of getting caught for dishonesty, respectively. We theorize: The magnitude and intensity of (...) the relationship between love of money and dishonest prospect may reveal how individuals frame dishonesty in the context of two levels of subjective norm—perceived corporate ethical values at the micro-level and Corruption Perceptions Index at the macro-level, collected from multiple sources. Based on 6382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents, our cross-level three-way interaction effect illustrates: As expected, managers in good barrels, mixed barrels, and bad barrels display low, medium, and high magnitude of dishonesty, respectively. With high CEV, the intensity is the same across cultures. With low CEV, the intensity of dishonesty is the highest in high CPI entities —the Enron Effect, but the lowest in low CPI entities. CPI has a strong impact on the magnitude of dishonesty, whereas CEV has a strong impact on the intensity of dishonesty. We demonstrate dishonesty in light of monetary values and two frames of social norm, revealing critical implications to the field of behavioral economics and business ethics. (shrink)

Empirical evidence from developmental psychology and anthropology points out that the human mind is predisposed to conceptualize the world in particular, species-specific ways. These cognitive predispositions lead to universal human commonsense views, often referred to as folk theories. Nevertheless, humans can transgress these views – i.e. they can contradict them with alternative descriptions, they perceive as more accurate – as exemplified in modern sciences. In this paper, I enquire about the cognitive faculties underlying such transgressions. I claim that there are (...) three faculties enabling us to part with these universal commonsense views of the world imposed by our nature. The first is our ability to represent representations – i.e. to form metarepresentations. The second is our ability to produce alternative representations both by explaining a familiar subject matter in terms of the principles governing different conceptual domains than the one that we are predisposed to apply to the subject matter and by directing our mind to new subject matters (for which we have no predisposed conceptual grasp), understanding them in terms of familiar domains. The third, finally, is our ability to give these representations an epistemic orientation. Key words: Human cognition, Domain-specific knowledge systems, Cognitive predispositions, Folk theories, Cognitive flexibility, Human – nonhuman distinction. (shrink)

Monetary Intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the bright side of Monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics, frames money attitude in the context of pay and life satisfaction, and controls money at the macro-level and micro-level. We theorize: Managers with low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior will have high subjective well-being: pay satisfaction and (...) quality of life. Data collected from 6586 managers in 32 cultures across six continents support our theory. Interestingly, GDP per capita is related to life satisfaction, but not to pay satisfaction. Individual income is related to both life and pay satisfaction. Neither GDP nor income is related to Happiness. Our theoretical model across three GDP groups offers new discoveries: In high GDP entities, “high income” not only reduces aspirations—“Rich, Motivator, and Power,” but also promotes stewardship behavior—“Budget, Give/Donate, and Contribute” and appreciation of “Achievement.” After controlling income, we demonstrate the bright side of Monetary Intelligence: Low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior define Monetary Intelligence. “Good apples enjoy good quality of life in good barrels.” This notion adds another explanation to managers’ low magnitude of dishonesty in entities with high Corruption Perceptions Index. In low GDP entities, high income is related to poor Budgeting skills and escalated Happiness. These managers experience equal satisfaction with pay and life. We add a new vocabulary to the conversation of monetary intelligence, income, GDP, happiness, subjective well-being, good and bad apples and barrels, corruption, and behavioral ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay will explore the constitution of a transcendental theory of space through an examination of the notion of spatial synthesis in the works of Husserl, Paliard, and Deleuze. First, we shall explore the constitution of the sensorial fields in Husserl’s phenomenology. In Husserlian terms, space is not originally an empty form that can eventually be filled with a certain empirical content. Accordingly, the philosopher claims that spatiality is a consequence of the immanent synthesis of sensations. Then, we will (...) move on to Jacques Paliard’s psychology of perception, where we will find both aesthetic and noetic synthesis as transcendental conditions for the perception of space. Lastly, we will explore Deleuze’s theory of intensive space, specifically the concept of depth developed in a dialogue with Paliard. This comparative analysis shows that purely intensive fields of individuation are a transcendental a priori for the perception of an extensive space. (shrink)