Based upon the Decision Field Theory (Busemeyer and Townsend 1993), we tested a model of dynamic reasoning to predict the effect of time pressure on analytical and experiential processing during decision-making. Forty-six participants were required to make investment decisions under four levels of time pressure. In each decision, participants were presented with experiential cues which were either congruent or incongruent with the analytical information. The congruent/incongruent conditions allowed us to examine how many decisions were based upon the experiential versus the (...) analytical information, and to see if this was affected by the varying degrees of time pressure. As expected, the overall accuracy was reduced with greater time pressure and accuracy was higher when the experiential and analytical cues were congruent than when they were incongruent. Of great interest was the data showing that under high time pressure participants used more experiential cues than at other time pressures. We suggest that the dynamic reasoning paradigm has some future potential for predicting the effects of experiential biases in general, and specifically under time pressure. (shrink)

Liver transplantation is the treatment of choice for many forms of liver disease. Unfortunately, the scarcity of cadaveric donor livers limits the availability of this technique. To improve the availability of liver transplantation, surgeons have developed the capability of removing a portion of liver from a live donor and transplanting it into a recipient. A few liver transplants using living donors have been performed worldwide.Our purpose was to analyze the ethics of liver transplants using living donors and to propose guidelines (...) for the procedure before it was introduced in the United States. We used a process of research ethics consultation that involves a collaboration between clinical investigators and clinical ethicists. We concluded that it was ethically appropriate to perform liver transplantation using living donors in a small series of patients on a trial basis, and we published our ethical guidelines in a medical journal before the procedure was introduced. We recommend this prospective, public approach for the introduction of other innovative therapies in medicine and surgery. (shrink)

The brain displays both the anatomical features of a vast amount of interconnected topological mappings as well as the functional features of a nonlinear, metastable system at the edge of chaos, equipped with a phase space where mental random walks tend towards lower energetic basins. Nevertheless, with the exception of some advanced neuro-anatomic descriptions and present-day connectomic research, very few studies have been addressing the topological path of a brain embedded or embodied in its external and internal environment. Herein, by (...) using new formal tools derived from algebraic topology, we provide an account of the metastable brain, based on the neuro-scientific model of Operational Architectonics of brain-mind functioning. We introduce a “topodynamic” description that shows how the relationships among the countless intertwined spatio-temporal levels of brain functioning can be assessed in terms of projections and mappings that take place on abstract structures, equipped with different dimensions, curvatures and energetic constraints. Such a topodynamical approach, apart from providing a biologically plausible model of brain function that can be operationalized, is also able to tackle the issue of a long-standing dichotomy: it throws indeed a bridge between the subjective, immediate datum of the naïve complex of sensations and mentations and the objective, quantitative, data extracted from experimental neuro-scientific procedures. Importantly, it opens the door to a series of new predictions and future directions of advancement for neuroscientific research. (shrink)

First of all, we would like to gratefully thank all commentators for the attention and effort they have put into reading and responding to our review paper [this issue] and for useful observations that suggest novel applications for our framework. We understand and accept that some of our claims might appear controversial and raise skepticism, because the overall neural framework we have proposed is difficult to frame in established categories, given its strong multidisciplinary character. To make an example, Elsevier is (...) publishing the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) 2017 Special Issue Collection. However, our paper could not fully fit in any of their Special Issues—attention, motivation, behavior; sensory and motor systems; novel treatments and translational neuroscience; genetics and epigenetics; learning and memory; neurodegenerative disorders and ageing; developmental neuroscience; neuronal, glial and cellular mechanisms; neuroendocrine and autonomic nervous systems; psychiatry and mental health; methods and techniques. Perhaps because our paper was mathematically, physically, biologically (neuroscientifically), and phenomenologically motivated from the start? Nevertheless, venturing in novel, fresh, testable proposals is badly needed in contemporary neuroscience, so to break into “the utter darkness of the inner mechanism of psychic acts… during the production of the concomitant phenomena of perception and thought, namely, feelings, consciousness and volition”—as Cajal had already observed in his opus magnus ‘Textura’. But as he soberly confessed: “This ideal is still very distant” (Ramon y Cajal, 1899-1904, p. 1,141). In the pursuit of that very ideal, neuroscience and psychology have had, and continue to have, a plethora of movements and schools of thought: behaviorism, cognitivism, neural Darwinism, social constructivism, Bayesian optimization...In our paper, we propose to go a step further, via the notion of topodynamics, towards “projectionism.” In what follows, trying to elucidate the main features of this Emperor’s new clothing, we proceed with the responses to the comments received. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that voluntary environmental governance mechanisms operate to enhance a firm’s environmental legitimacy as opposed to being a driver of proactive environmental performance activities. To understand how these mechanisms contribute to the firm’s environmental legitimacy, we investigate whether environmental corporate governance characteristics are associated with voluntary environmental disclosure. We examine an increasingly important attribute of a firm’s disclosure setting, namely the disclosure of greenhouse gas (GHG) information. GHG information represents proprietary non-financial information about the firm’s exposure to environmental (...) concerns and is related to the firm’s operations and future profitability. Thus, we expect governance participants would view such information as a potentially important strategic device for managing stakeholders’ demands for information concerning environmental risks. We find that the presence of an environmental committee and a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) is positively associated with the likelihood of GHG disclosure and that CSOs are associated with disclosure transparency. Further analysis reveals that the likelihood of disclosure is associated with committee size, number of committee meetings, expertise of committee members and CSO, and overlap between the environmental committee and audit committee. Only expertise of the environmental committee members and the CSO are associated with GHG disclosure transparency, while larger committees tend to be associated with lower transparency. Our results are particularly important to those with interests in evaluating the potential role that corporate governance mechanisms play in responding to stakeholder concerns about environmental risks. Directors and officers who are considering appointment to similar governance positions, may wish to consider what attributes would make such governance positions more influential. (shrink)

The creation of a specialized executive position that oversees sustainability activities represents a distinct shift in the structure of top management teams and their approach for addressing sustainability concerns. However, little is known about these management team members, namely the corporate sustainability officers or CSOs. We examine CSO appointments and their association with subsequent sustainability performance. Our results indicate that the creation of a CSO position may represent more of a symbolic versus substantive governance mechanism. Further tests suggest that CSO (...) expertise and the firm’s existing sustainability performance affect the association between the CSO and post-appointment sustainability performance. We find no association between CSO appointments and subsequent sustainability performance for firms that were already poor performers, while firms possessing relatively higher levels of prior sustainability performance appointing a CSO begin to experience significant improvements to performance after 3 years. We further find that CSOs with prior sustainability expertise are associated with increases in sustainability performance in firms that were already strong performers, but not in firms with poor sustainability performance. Non-expert CSOs, on the other hand, are associated with initial decreases in performance for poor performing firms, whereas better performing firms hiring non-expert CSOs are able to rely on other sustainability attributes of the firm and benefit from improvements in performance in the long term. We discuss the potential importance of these positions as it relates to symbolic versus substantive governance mechanisms through the lens of top management team literature streams. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch an account of moral blame and blameworthiness. I begin by clarifying what I take blame to be and explaining how blameworthiness is to be analyzed in terms of it. I then consider different accounts of the conditions of blameworthiness and, in the end, settle on one according to which a person is blameworthy for φ-ing just in case, in φ-ing, she violates one of a particular class of moral requirements governing the attitudes we bear, and (...) our mental orientation, toward people and other objects of significant moral worth. These requirements embody the moral stricture that we accord to these others a sufficient level of respect, one that their moral worth demands. This is a familiar theme which has its roots in P. F. Strawson’s pioneering views on moral responsibility. My development of it leads me to the conclusion that acting wrongly is not a condition of blameworthiness: violating a moral requirement to perform, or refrain from performing, an action is neither necessary nor sufficient for being blameworthy. All we are ever blameworthy for, I will argue, are certain aspects of our mental bearing toward others. We can be said to be blameworthy for our actions only derivatively, in the sense that those actions are the natural manifestations of the things for which we are strictly speaking blameworthy. (shrink)

_Current Issues in Business Ethics_ analyzes the questions which underlie business activities, arguing that the prime object for a legitimate business must be sustainability. It also looks at the issues between individuals and business and asks whether businesses can support their employees as an alternative to family and church. Finally it assesses the impact of most recent trends in business looking at: * the activities of multinational companies * the changing gender balance * privatization * the loss of power of (...) the trade unions. (shrink)

Physical and biological measurements might display range values extending towards infinite. The occurrence of infinity in equations, such as the black hole singularities, is a troublesome issue that causes many theories to break down when assessing extreme events. Different methods, such as re-normalization, have been proposed to avoid detrimental infinity. Here a novel technique is proposed, based on geometrical considerations and the Alexander Horned sphere, that permits to undermine infinity in physical and biophysical equations. In this unconventional approach, a continuous (...) monodimensional line becomes an assembly of countless bidimensional lines that superimpose in quantifiable knots and bifurcations. In other words, we may state that Achilles leaves the straight line and overtakes the turtle. (shrink)

_Current Issues in Business Ethics_ analyzes the questions which underlie business activities, arguing that the prime object for a legitimate business must be sustainability. It also looks at the issues between individuals and business and asks whether businesses can support their employees as an alternative to family and church. Finally it assesses the impact of most recent trends in business looking at: * the activities of multinational companies * the changing gender balance * privatization * the loss of power of (...) the trade unions. (shrink)

The discrepancy between syntax and semantics is a painstaking issue that hinders a better comprehension of the underlying neuronal processes in the human brain. In order to tackle the issue, we at first describe a striking correlation between Wittgenstein's Tractatus, that assesses the syntactic relationships between language and world, and Perlovsky's joint language-cognitive computational model, that assesses the semantic relationships between emotions and “knowledge instinct”. Once established a correlation between a purely logical approach to the language and computable psychological activities, (...) we aim to find the neural correlates of syntax and semantics in the human brain. Starting from topological arguments, we suggest that the semantic properties of a proposition are processed in higher brain's functional dimensions than the syntactic ones. In a fully reversible process, the syntactic elements embedded in Broca's area project into multiple scattered semantic cortical zones. The presence of higher functional dimensions gives rise to the increase in informational content that takes place in semantic expressions. Therefore, diverse features of human language and cognitive world can be assessed in terms of both the logic armor described by the Tractatus, and the neurocomputational techniques at hand. One of our motivations is to build a neuro-computational framework able to provide a feasible explanation for brain's semantic processing, in preparation for novel computers with nodes built into higher dimensions. (shrink)

We show that the double jump is definable in the computably enumerable sets. Our main result is as follows: let [Formula: see text] is the Turing degree of a [Formula: see text] set J ≥T0″}. Let [Formula: see text] such that [Formula: see text] is upward closed in [Formula: see text]. Then there is an ℒ property [Formula: see text] such that [Formula: see text] if and only if there is an A where A ≡T F and [Formula: see text]. (...) A corollary of this is that, for all n ≥ 2, the high n computably enumerable degrees are invariant in the computably enumerable sets. Our work resolves Martin's Invariance Conjecture. (shrink)

Neuroscientists are able to detect physical changes in information entropy in the available neurodata. However, the information paradigm is inadequate to describe fully nervous dynamics and mental activities such as perception. This paper suggests explanations to neural dynamics that provide an alternative to thermodynamic and information accounts. We recall the Banach–Tarski paradox, which informally states that when pieces of a ball are moved and rotated without changing their shape, a synergy between two balls of the same volume is achieved instead (...) of the original one. We show how and why BTP might display this physical and biological synergy meaningfully, making it possible to model nervous activities. The anatomical and functional structure of the central nervous system’s nodes and edges makes it possible to perform a sequence of moves inside the connectome that doubles the amount of available cortical oscillations. In particular, a BTP-based mechanism permits scale-invariant nervous oscillations to amplify and propagate towards widely separated brain areas. Paraphrasing the BTP’s definition, we could state that: when a few components of a self-similar nervous oscillation are moved and rotated throughout the cortical connectome, two self-similar oscillations are achieved instead of the original one. Furthermore, based on topological structures, we illustrate how, counterintuitively, the amplification of scale-free oscillations does not require information transfer. (shrink)

The various theories about business ethics need to take much more notice of technology, realising that technology has its own increasing momentum which is driving business, and that, whereas business people think they control technology as a simple neutral means to their ends, in fact the reverse is true: business is the servant of technological development. Jacques Ellul, however, offers some hope for the future to help us ‘reappropriate our humanity’. Dr Davies is a senior lecturer in Strategic Management and (...) Business Ethics at the Buckingham Business School, Buckinghamshire College [a College of Brunel University], Newland Park Campus, Gorelands Lane, Chalfton‐St‐Giles, Buckinghamshire HP8 4PB . His background is in mining and production engineering and he would like to hear from others interested in the new field of engineering ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Without Buddha I Could not Be a ChristianPeter A. HuffWithout Buddha I Could not Be a Christian. By Paul F. Knitter. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009. xvii + 240 pp.Paul Knitter’s contributions to interfaith dialogue and Christian theologies of religions are well known and widely appreciated. Even critics of Christian theories of pluralism, most prominently Pope Benedict XVI, have acknowledged the significance of Knitter’s strategic integration of perspectives from liberation (...) theology into what is sometimes an overly abstract field of inquiry. Colleagues active in Buddhist-Christian studies hold Knitter in especially high esteem as a writer, teacher, translator, [End Page 211] editor, self-described interreligious theologian, and unapologetic person of faith. This book, his first major publication since accepting the Paul Tillich chair at Union Theological Seminary, offers a uniquely first-person reflection on the spiritual fruits of a career profoundly and provocatively shaped by two religious traditions.Written for a popular audience, the book, the author says, has been in the works “for the past forty years” (p. xv). The reader gains valuable insight into the professional and private life of a remarkable “dialogical theologian” (p. xv), whose experience includes a rather conventional upbringing in working-class Midwestern Catholicism, some twenty years of service as a seminarian and missionary priest with the Society of the Divine Word, graduate education in Europe with the likes of Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) and Karl Rahner (1904–1984) during the revolutionary years of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), and nearly four decades of pioneering work as a productive scholar-activist in mainstream academic theology. At times Knitter even quotes from his unpublished journals in an effort to document fully his unscripted intellectual and spiritual development.Though highly personal, the book is not primarily an autobiography or conversion narrative. Instead, it is an introspective analysis of the internal dialogue that virtually all participants in interreligious affairs recognize as the heart of the global ecumenical encounter. Knitter’s book serves as something of an apologia for what is known today as dual religious belonging or hyphenated religious identity. The author concludes his text with this intriguing but not surprising spiritual self-portrait: both lifelong baptized Christian and “card-carrying Buddhist” (p. 216). The challenge of accounting for this “both /and” orientation grants the book its distinctive character and its reason for being.Knitter borrows his method from the twentieth-century minor classic The Way of All the Earth: Experiments in Truth and Religion (1978). In that work, Notre Dame theology professor and Holy Cross priest James Dunne suggested that the path to holiness in the contemporary West leads inevitably through intimate engagement with the ancient wisdom traditions of the East. Even a casual review of the spiritual history of the last century or so will confirm how earnest seekers in modernity’s secular city have renewed, rediscovered, or critically redefined their native faith commitment through life-changing contact with the ideas and values of Asian religious traditions. It is a story familiar to anyone acquainted with the extraordinary religious pilgrimages of interfaith saints such as Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), Thomas Merton (1915–1968), and Bede Griffiths (1906–1993).Dunne dubbed this experience the “spiritual adventure of our time” (p. 2); Knitter passionately agrees. He applies Dunne’s dialectical method and his special terminology to his own spiritual odyssey, “passing over” from Christian questions and problems to possible answers and solutions in the Buddhist tradition and then “passing back” to Christian belief and practice with enhanced purpose and a fresh sense of integrity.The starting point for Knitter’s project is cognitive, moral, even emotional dissatisfaction with some of the fundamental structures of the historic Christian worldview: God as transcendent creator and lord of history, Jesus Christ as incarnate Logos and [End Page 212] universal savior, and salvation as the survival of human personality after death and the eschatological redemption of all finite reality. In essence, Knitter claims, traditional theism and the core myth of Christianity as expressed in scripture, creed, and liturgy appear painfully ineffective and to a large extent incoherent in the context of modern life and the international interface of world religions. What especially drives the... (shrink)

Ethics and Empowerment is aimed atproviding tactical, high-level solutions to today's business and professionalchallenges. Gathering together experts in various fields, this line of titleswill benefit professionals as they face the challenges of the ever-changingbusiness climate. Amid the burgeoning literature on business ethics, this book providesan important lead in taking a well-known everyday management notion such as"empowerment" and using it to make "ethics" more relevantand accessible to the business world. Adding a major contribution to theongoing debate about the role of business (...) in society, the content examines theissues of power, control, and autonomy, addressing such questions asempowerment as a matter of justice, and also provides case studies of theorganizational experiences of empowerment programs. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is, perhaps, the most controversial philosopher of the twentieth-century. Little has been written on him or about his work and its significance for educational thought. This unique collection by a group of international scholars reexamines Heidegger's work and its legacy for educational thought.

This is a new critical latin edition, with facing English translation, of Peter Abelard’s ethical treatise, sometimes entitled "Know Thyself." The book is one in the series of Oxford Medieval Texts. Accompanying the latin text and simple, easy reading translation is a most helpful introduction by Luscombe which points out the historical importance of this little treatise as among the first finely articulated attempts at bringing the classical concerns with human virtues and character together with the theological concerns of (...) a believing Christian. Ethics deals with the problem of how we may properly speak of the moral formation of a person. Abelard’s treatment is more weighted toward the attitudes of man than the nature of his deeds. What is worked out, with the help of many suggestive examples and frequent reference to the religious practices of the twelfth-century church, is a crucial theory of intention and a definition of sin. He holds that our intention, measured to the standards of divine law, determines the morality of our actions : "We consider morals to be the vices or virtues of the mind which make us prone to good or bad works." Good and bad emerge from the struggle where there is consent to an act virtuously or viciously motivated. Morality does not come from the inclination since the constitution of man includes both his virtues and his vices; nor does it come from his acts since all acts are indifferent, before God, to good or bad. It is the intent or consent to act that is determinant. Sin, the other major theme, complementary to intention, is defined as contempt for God, i.e., "to do by no means on his account what we believe we ought to do for him." He founds his notions of morality on God as that good, the source and whole, such that "although... there is a number of good things so that goodness exists in plurality, it does not follow therefore that goodness is greater." By working out these notions, Abelard delivers an innovative morality of conduct for a man beset with a character marked with both virtues and vices, emphasizing man’s faculty of choice and underscoring his ability to know and be responsible to the divine law. Besides the introduction and text, Luscombe has included a description of the manuscripts used in preparing the text and indices of quotations, allusions, and manuscripts.—W. A. F. (shrink)