Hospital systems commonly face the challenge of determining just ways to allocate scarce drugs during national shortages. There is no standardised approach of how this should be instituted, but principles of distributive justice are commonly used so that patients who are most likely to benefit from the drug receive it. As a result, clinical indications, in which the evidence for the drug is assumed to be established, are often prioritised over research use. In this manuscript, we present a case of (...) a phase II investigational trial of intravenous thiamine for delirium prevention in patients undergoing haematopoietic stem cell transplantation to emphasise several shortcomings in the overarching prioritisation of clinical over research uses of scarce drugs. Specifically, we present the following considerations: clinical use may not have stronger evidence than research use; a strong scientific rationale for research use may outweigh the claim for clinical indications in which there is weak evidence; treatment within the context of a clinical trial may be the standard of care; and research use may not only benefit patients receiving the treatment but also offers the prospect of improving future clinical care. In summary, we argue against allocation schemes that prohibit all research uses of scarce drugs and instead recommend that allocation schemes include a balanced approach that weighs risks and benefits of access to scarce drugs irrespective of the research versus clinical use designation. All data relevant to the study are included in the article. (shrink)

Composite materialism, as I will understand it, is the view that human persons are composite material objects. This paper develops and investigates an argument, The Vague Singulars Argument, for the falsity of composite materialism. We shall see that cogent or not, the Vague Singulars Argument has philosophically significant ramifications.

Immanuel Kant’s well known and thoroughly discussed criticism of the cosmological argument, hereafter ‘CA’, is that it presupposes or depends upon the cogency of the ontological argument, hereafter ‘OA’. Call this criticism ‘the Dependency Thesis’. It is fair to say that the received view on the matter is that Kant failed to establish the Dependency Thesis.1 In what follows, I argue that the received view is mistaken. I begin by rehearsing the standard objection to what is typically taken to be (...) Kant’s primary argument for the Dependency Thesis. I defend Kant by presenting a different argument for his thesis. This argument is not vulnerable to the standard objection, and there is good reason to think that Kant had such an argument in mind. (shrink)

In der neuen Literatur tiber Leibniz' Spatphilosophie findet man zwei deutlich einander entgegengesetzte Theorien Uber die Realitat des Körpers. Auf der einen Seite gibt es Gesichtspunkte, die ihn mit einer Phänomenalismuslehre verbinden, nach welcher die Körper nichts anderes als koordinierte Perzeptionen unausgedehnter Monaden sind. Auf der anderen Seite gibt es Griinde, die dafur sprechen, daß Leibniz die Auffassung vertreten muß, daß Körper Aggregate von Monaden sind. In diesem Aufsatz suche ich zu zeigen, daß die phanomenalistische Interpretation aufgrund der starken Textzeugnisse, (...) die Leibniz beständig zur Aggregatthese hindrängen, zuriickzuweisen ist. Daruber hinaus weise ich jedoch die verbreitete Auffassung eben der Aggregatthese zurück, d. h. die Meinung, gewisse Vielheiten von Monaden riefen bloß die Illusion, Körper zu sein, hervor, wenn sie durch andere Monaden M falsch perzipiert" werden. Gegen diese Auffassung des falschen Perzipierens ftihre ich ins Feld, daß die Aggregatthese als ein Deutungsversuch der Natur oder des Wesens des Körpers verstanden werden mufi. Wenn Leibniz sagt, Körper seien Aggregate von Monaden, so ist das nicht als blofie Behauptung, gewisse Monaden erschienen anderen Monaden als Körper, zu verstehen, sondern als die These, daß jeder Körper seinem Wesen nach eine Vielheit von Monadenist. (shrink)

This study reports on the development of scale items derived from the pluralistic moral philosophy literature. In addition, the manner in which individuals combine aspects of the different philosophies in making ethical evaluations was explored.

The conceptual model presented in this article argues that corporations exhibit specific behaviors that signal their true level of moral development. Accordingly, the authors identify five levels of moral development and discuss the dynamics that move corporations from one level to another. Examples of corporate behavior which are indicative of specific stages of moral development are offered.

More than three decades after its advent in political science, rational choice theory has yet to add appreciably to the stock of knowledge about politics. In Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory we traced this failure to methodological defects rooted in the aspiration to come up with universal theories of politics. After responding to criticisms of our argument, we elaborate on our earlier recommendations about how to improve the quality of rational choice applications. Building on suggestions of contributors to this volume, (...) we lay out an empirically based research program designed to delineate the conditions under which rational choice explanations are likely to be useful. (shrink)

A framework is designed to aid the marketing decision maker in choosing between deontological and utilitarian reasoning when attempting to solve ethical problems. the framework uses miller's theory of living systems to develop a hierarchy of exchanges as a basis for analysis. then the historical appeal of deontology and utilitarianism are analyzed with respect to the hierarchy.

Three-dimensionalists , sometimes referred to as endurantists, think that objects persist through time by being “wholly present” at every time they exist. But what is it for something to be wholly present at a time? It is surprisingly difficult to say. The threedimensionalist is free, of course, to take ‘is wholly present at’ as one of her theory’s primitives, but this is problematic for at least one reason: some philosophers claim not to understand her primitive. Clearly the three-dimensionalist would be (...) better off if she could state her theory in terms accessible to all. We think she can. What is needed is a definition of ‘is wholly present at’ that all can understand. in this paper, we offer one. (shrink)

One area of business performance of particular interest to both scholars and practitioners is corporate social responsibility. The notion that organizations should be attentive to the needs of constituents other than shareholders has been investigated and vigorously debated for over two decades. This has provoked an especially rich and diverse literature investigating the relationship between business and society. As a result, researchers have urged the study of the profiles and backgrounds of corporate upper echelons in order to better understand this (...) relationship.There is ample evidence that corporations have in recent years increased the proportion of outside directors on their boards. This has been partly in reaction to increased interest in the corporate social responsiveness of business organizations and suggestions that the board of directors could play a unique role in this area. The expectation on the part of practitioners, researchers, and governmental regulators is that outside directors will advocate greater corporate responsiveness to society''s needs by playing a more active role in overseeing managerial decisions. (shrink)

Putnam says that "In one way of conceiving it, realism is an empirical theory." In the present work it is maintained that, in another way of conceiving it, realism is a grammatical thesis. That is, many of the principles taken to be definitive of realism, e.g., "Truth is objective," "Truth is mind-independent," Dummett's "a thought can be true only if there is something in virtue of which it is true," are what Wittgenstein would have called "grammatical remarks." They simply call (...) attention to certain features of the grammar of truth and related concepts. Thus, e.g., it is a feature of the way we use "is true" that statements are not spoken of as true for one person and not true for another. ;The character of grammar and of grammatical remarks in general is spelled out in some detail; it is argued in particular that Wittgenstein is not intending to provide, by means of these notions, a particular account of necessary truth. He is suggesting, rather, that looking upon certain philosophical claims as grammatical is a way of "deflating" them, stripping them of their appearance of profundity. Neither can grammatical remarks imply substantive philosophical theses. This is why realism, conceived as comprising grammatical remarks, does not imply scepticism, as is often supposed, and is not itself a controversial or exciting doctrine. ;There are of course some controversial formulations of realism, versions which are not simply underwritten by grammar. Thus some philosophers have held that, because the truth conditions of a proposition are essentially independent of any evidence we may have for the proposition, truth may not be accessible at all. I believe, however, that Putnam has shown, by means of an argument which is instructively viewed as a grammatical investigation, that truth is accessible, at least to an "ideal" theory. ;Recent expressions of idealism are argued to provide helpful accounts of language use and understanding, but fail to establish that truth is nothing but warranted assertibility, or that it must in some sense "arise within us." Such a conclusion runs afoul of the grammar of truth, of which realism is shown to provide the proper account. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether there is a relationship between a person's degree of religiousness and corporate social responsibility orientation. A total of 411 managers and 506 students from seven universities were surveyed. The statistical analysis showed that religiousness does influence students' orientation toward the economic, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of business. It does not, however, have a significant impact upon the managers' attitudes. When the "low religiousness" students and managers were compared, differences were found with (...) respect to the economic, ethical, and philanthropic components of corporate social responsibility. Similar results were obtained when the "high religiousness" students and managers were compared. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether there is a relationship between a person's degree of religiousness and corporate social responsibility orientation. A total of 411 managers and 506 students from seven universities were surveyed. The statistical analysis showed that religiousness does influence students' orientation toward the economic, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of business. It does not, however, have a significant impact upon the managers' attitudes. When the "low religiousness" students and managers were compared, differences were found with (...) respect to the economic, ethical, and philanthropic components of corporate social responsibility. Similar results were obtained when the "high religiousness" students and managers were compared. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

In the never-ending debate about the scope and limits of science, the hottest argument now centres on the scientific study of man himself. Can there be a science of man at all, in any comprehensive sense? Or is the idea in some way ultimately self-defeating, like that of pulling oneself up by one's own shoelaces? My purpose in this paper is not to venture a direct answer to this ticklish question, but rather to highlight one or two desirable characteristics of (...) a science which I think must inevitably be lacking in any attempt to turn the scientific spotlight upon ourselves. Whether we call the attainable residue by the name of ‘science’ is less important than that we see clearly what not to expect of it. (shrink)

This article focuses on the issue of finding and illustrating a common ground for discussions between those academics involved in the science of entrepreneurial behavior and those involved in the ethics of entrepreneurial behavior. Several articles appeared in the April 1994 Business Ethics Quarterly on the relationship between the science of business and business ethics. In one article by Weaver and Trevino, the authors proposed three possible relationships between the normative and empirical business ethics. The author of another article in (...) that issue, Tom Donaldson, endorsed only one of the three relationships offered by Weaver and Trevino and argued against the others. The relationship endorsed by Donaldson was called “symbiosis.” In doing so he recognized that both normative and empirical insights are necessary to business ethics. This article follows the combinedreasoning of these authors by describing a symbiotic relationship between the empirical and normative requirements of trust building for entrepreneurs. (shrink)

This article uses Arndt's depiction of marketing epistemology to suggest a possible explanation for the lack of emphasis on marketing ethics within the marketing literature. While a growing number of writers are turning their attention to the area, marketing's heavy reliance on logical empiricism has contributed to a disinclination in the development of this area. Only through recent and numerous revelations of misconduct has the discipline of marketing responded to its ethical dimensions.

We have trained deep convolutional neural networks to accelerate the computation of seismic attributes by an order of magnitude. These results are enabled by overcoming the prohibitive memory requirements typical of 3D DCNs for segmentation and regression by implementing a novel, memory-efficient 3D-to-2D convolutional architecture and by including tens of thousands of synthetically generated labeled examples to enhance DCN training. Including diverse synthetic labeled seismic in training helps the network generalize enabling it to accurately predict seismic attribute values on field-acquired (...) seismic surveys. Once trained, our DCN tool generates attributes with no input parameters and no additional user guidance. The DCN attribute computations are virtually indistinguishable from conventionally computed attributes while computing up to 100 times faster. (shrink)

'Leading economists presenting fundamentally important issues in economic theory' is the theme of the Nancy Schwartz lectures series held annually at the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University. Reporting on lectures delivered in the years 1983 through 1997, this collection of essays discusses economic behavior at the individual and group level and the implications to the performance of economic systems. Using non-technical language, the speakers present theoretical, experimental, and empirical analysis of decision making under uncertainty and (...) under full and bounded rationality, the influence of economic incentives and habits, and the effects of learning and evolution on dynamic choice. Perfect competition, economic development, social insurance and social mobility, and negotiation and economic survival, are major economic subjects analyzed through our understanding of economic behavior. (shrink)

An analysis is provided for one possible practical link between rhetorical and social scientific inquiry. That link is found in the rhetoric of the reasoned social scientific fact. Understanding this point of intersection involves grounding a rhetorical theory of how to create and to evaluate arguments (a rhetorical theory of invention and judgment) in the practical problems that confront contemporary social scientists during their efforts to construct reasoned social facts. The applicability of this invention and judgment framework to analysis of (...) the rhetoric of social science is illustrated with reference to a controversy over the legitimacy of rules theoretic explanations of human communication processes. Implications of the practical link between rhetorical and social scientific inquiry are then drawn out. (shrink)