We propose a construct, the Trust Triangle, that highlights three primary mechanisms that provide ex post accountability for opportunistic behavior and motivate ex ante trust in economic relationships. The mechanisms are a society’s legal and regulatory framework, market-based discipline and reputational capital, and culture, including individual ethics and social norms. The Trust Triangle provides a framework to conceptualize the relationships between trust, corporate accountability, legal liability, reputation, and culture. We use the Trust Triangle to summarize recent developments in the empirical (...) finance literature that examine how trust is formed and how trust, or its absence, affects financial markets, firm performance, and the incidence of financial fraud. To date, most studies examine only one leg of the Trust Triangle in isolation. The evidence, however, indicates that all three legs of the Trust Triangle have first-order effects on a wide range of financial outcomes and that they are interrelated. Attempts to model trust and trustworthiness that do not incorporate all three aspects of the Trust Triangle will therefore miss essential aspects of the basic economic problem of how counterparties overcome the risks of moral hazard, asymmetric information, and opportunism to engage in mutually beneficial exchange and production activities. We focus especially on culture-related mechanisms, a recently developed area in empirical finance research that has potential to influence the more established research on laws and reputation. (shrink)

SummaryHuman height is a heritable trait that is known to be influenced by environmental factors and general standard of living. Individual and population stature is correlated with health, education and economic achievement. Strong sexual selection pressures for stature have been observed in multiple diverse populations, however; there is significant global variance in gender equality and prohibitions on female mate selection. This paper explores the contribution of general standard of living and gender inequality to the variance in global female population heights. (...) Female population heights of 96 nations were culled from previously published sources and public access databases. Factor analysis with United Nations international data on education rates, life expectancy, incomes, maternal and childhood mortality rates, ratios of gender participation in education and politics, the Human Development Index and the Gender Inequality Index was run. Results indicate that population heights vary more closely with gender inequality than with population health, income or education. (shrink)

Quentin Smith offers powerful arguments against the New Theory of Reference propounded by leading thhinkers in the philosophy of language. Smith defends the tensed theory of time and argues that the simultaneity is absoltue, basing this position on the theory that all propositions exist in time. Using detailed propostitions and a theory of cognitive significance, he introduces an alternative interpretation of reference that will be relevant to metaphysicians, philosophers of science and philosophers of language and may come to be (...) recognised as the definitive statement on the tensed theory of time. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to extend the previous research on ethics in retailing. Prior research of Dornoff and Tankersley, Gifford and Norris, Norris and Gifford, and Burns and Rayman examined the ethics orientation of retail sales persons, sales managers, and business school students. These studies found the college students less ethically-oriented than retail sales people and retail managers. The present study attempts to extend the research on ethics formation to a geographically and academically diverse sample, and to determine (...) if retail management experience in the form of a professional practicum or internship, or entry level management training programs, such as experienced by recent graduates, are critical factors in the formation of business ethics. The sample consisted of thirty-three students majoring in Human Ecology with a concentration in Retail Merchandising and 51 recent graduates of the retail Merchandising program. The series of fourteen vignettes developed by Dornoff and Tankersley was used. An acknowledged limitation of this study is the validity of the questionnaire developed by Dornoff and Tankersley due to the method of development and new laws concerning warranties and credit etc. which have occurred since 1976. The instrument was used, however, to maintain consistency with earlier studies for the purpose of comparison of groups. No significant differences were found in the students' perceptions of the fourteen actions presented in the vignettes, but the range of the responses in the post-internship tests increased in many cases. The alumni appeared to be slightly more ethical than the students but not as ethical as the managers surveyed in 1986 by Norris and Gifford. Indications are that the critical point of ethics formation may be at the mid-management level and that internships and management training programs have little effect on the ethical perceptions of participants. These findings are consistent with studies such as Gable and Topol, and Jordan and Davis which showed high Machiavellian scores among young retailing executives, often buyers, as opposed to upper level retailing management. Scales with measure Machiavellianism, or manipulativeness, have been used as an alternative method of examining business ethics. (shrink)

Reputation monitoring and the punishment of cheats are thought to be crucial to the viability and maintenance of human cooperation in large groups of non-kin. However, since the cost of policing moral norms must fall to those in the group, policing is itself a public good subject to exploitation by free riders. Recently, it has been suggested that belief in supernatural monitoring and punishment may discourage individuals from violating established moral norms and so facilitate human cooperation. Here we use cross-cultural (...) survey data from a global sample of 87 countries to show that beliefs about two related sources of supernatural monitoring and punishment — God and the afterlife —independently predict respondents' assessment of the justifiability of a range of moral transgressions. This relationship holds even after controlling for frequency of religious participation, country of origin, religious denomination and level of education. As well as corroborating experimental work, our findings suggest that, across cultural and religious backgrounds, beliefs about the permissibility of moral transgressions are tied to beliefs about supernatural monitoring and punishment, supporting arguments that these beliefs may be important promoters of cooperation in human groups. (shrink)

In Big Gods, Norenzayan (2013) presents the most comprehensive treatment yet of the Big Gods question. The book is a commendable attempt to synthesize the rapidly growing body of survey and experimental research on prosocial effects of religious primes together with cross-cultural data on the distribution of Big Gods. There are, however, a number of problems with the current cross-cultural evidence that weaken support for a causal link between big societies and certain types of Big Gods. Here we attempt to (...) clarify these problems and, in so doing, correct any potential misinterpretation of the cross-cultural findings, provide new insight into the processes generating the patterns observed, and flag directions for future research. (shrink)

v. 1. Regarding method -- v. 2. Renaissance virtues -- v. 3. Hobbes and civil science.

A growing body of research indicates that attentional biases toward emotional stimuli are not automatic, but may depend on the relevance of emotion to the top-down search goals of the observer. To...

"The most authoritative version of Hegel's "Introduction" to his lectures on the history of philosophy.

At the end of the nineteenth century, approaches from experimental physiology made inroads into embryological research. A new generation of embryologists felt urged to study the mechanisms of organ formation. This new program, most prominently defended by Wilhelm Roux, was called Entwicklungsmechanik. Named variously as “causal embryology”, “physiological embryology” or “developmental mechanics”, it catalyzed the movement of embryology from a descriptive science to one exploring causal mechanisms. This article examines the specific scientific and epistemological meaning of the mechanistic approaches of (...) embryological development by focusing on Wilhelm His’ histogenetic work. Roux was neither the first, nor the only one to argue for an experimental exploration of causes in embryology. At the time of Roux, physiological explanations of the genesis of the anatomical forms were developing in parallel, not only in German-speaking countries, but in France, Switzerland and English-speaking countries as well. The experimental approach and the cellular descriptions of embryogenesis were already omni-present when Roux proposed his Entwicklungsmechanik. However, these approaches remained disjointed. It appears that it was Wilhelm His who first succeeded in combining the question of the causal factors determining epigenesis, which was closely connected with experimentation on, and cellular descriptions of, development, in a coherent and concrete synthesis, making him one of the true initiators of the developmental mechanics. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to extend the previous research on ethics in retailing. Prior research of Dornoff and Tankersley (1985–1976), Gifford and Norris (1987), Norris and Gifford (1988), and Burns and Rayman (1989) examined the ethics orientation of retail sales persons, sales managers, and business school students. These studies found the college students less ethically-oriented than retail sales people and retail managers. The present study attempts to extend the research on ethics formation to a geographically and academically diverse (...) sample, and to determine if retail management experience in the form of a professional practicum or internship, or entry level management training programs, such as experienced by recent graduates, are critical factors in the formation of business ethics. The sample consisted of thirty-three students majoring in Human Ecology with a concentration in Retail Merchandising and 51 recent graduates of the retail Merchandising program. The series of fourteen vignettes developed by Dornoff and Tankersley (1975–1976) was used. An acknowledged limitation of this study is the validity of the questionnaire developed by Dornoff and Tankersley due to the method of development and new laws concerning warranties and credit etc. which have occurred since 1976. The instrument was used, however, to maintain consistency with earlier studies for the purpose of comparison of groups. No significant differences were found in the students' perceptions of the fourteen actions presented in the vignettes, but the range of the responses in the post-internship tests increased in many cases. The alumni appeared to be slightly more ethical than the students but not as ethical as the managers surveyed in 1986 by Norris and Gifford. Indications are that the critical point of ethics formation may be at the mid-management level and that internships and management training programs have little effect on the ethical perceptions of participants. These findings are consistent with studies such as Gable and Topol (1988), and Jordan and Davis (1990) which showed high Machiavellian scores among young retailing executives, often buyers, as opposed to upper level retailing management. Scales with measure Machiavellianism, or manipulativeness, have been used as an alternative method of examining business ethics. (shrink)

The relational interpretation of quantum mechanics proposes to solve the measurement problem and reconcile completeness and locality of quantum mechanics by postulating relativity to the observer for events and facts, instead of an absolute “view from nowhere”. The aim of this paper is to clarify this interpretation, and in particular, one of its central claims concerning the possibility for an observer to have knowledge about other observer’s events. I consider three possible readings of this claim, and develop the most promising (...) one, relativism, to show how it fares when confronted with the traditional interpretative problems of quantum mechanics. Although it provides answers to some problems, I claim that there is currently no adapted locality criterion to evaluate whether the resulting interpretation is local or not. (shrink)

This book proposes a novel position in the debate on scientific realism: Modal Empiricism. Modal empiricism is the view that the aim of science is to provide theories that correctly delimit, in a unified way, the range of experiences that are naturally possible given our position in the world. The view is associated with a pragmatic account of scientific representation and an original notion of situated modalities, together with an inductive epistemology for modalities. It purports to provide a faithful account (...) of scientific practice and of its impressive achievements, and defuses the main motivations for scientific realism. More generally, Modal Empiricism purports to be the precise articulation of a pragmatist stance towards science. This book is of interest to any philosopher involved in the debate on scientific realism, or interested in how to properly understand the content, aim and achievements of science. (shrink)

Consciousness is perhaps the most puzzling problem we humans face in trying to understand ourselves. Here, eighteen essays offer new angles on the subject. The contributors, who include many of the leading figures in philosophy of mind, discuss such central topics as intentionality, phenomenal content, and the relevance of quantum mechanics to the study of consciousness.

We can think about the use of controlled substances in the treatment of anxiety disorders in two simple but diametrically opposed ways. First, we can say that anxiety disorders are trivial and require only acts of willpower, or, if anxiety disorders do require treatment, they are better treated without the use of benzodiazepines. When BZs are used to treat anxiety, they pose grave risks of addiction to the patients to whom these medicines are prescribed; they relieve patients’ symptoms, but are (...) the equivalent of a pharmacological “roach motel,” a haven into which many unsuspecting patients enter, but from which few emerge without becoming addicted. Patients must then face terrible struggles to free themselves of dependence on BZs, and this compounds the problem for which they sought treatment. Furthermore, the large number of prescriptions for BZs are a threat to the public health because these drugs are widely abused by alcoholics and drug addicts. (shrink)

We can think about the use of controlled substances in the treatment of anxiety disorders in two simple but diametrically opposed ways. First, we can say that anxiety disorders are trivial and require only acts of willpower, or, if anxiety disorders do require treatment, they are better treated without the use of benzodiazepines. When BZs are used to treat anxiety, they pose grave risks of addiction to the patients to whom these medicines are prescribed; they relieve patients’ symptoms, but are (...) the equivalent of a pharmacological “roach motel,” a haven into which many unsuspecting patients enter, but from which few emerge without becoming addicted. Patients must then face terrible struggles to free themselves of dependence on BZs, and this compounds the problem for which they sought treatment. Furthermore, the large number of prescriptions for BZs are a threat to the public health because these drugs are widely abused by alcoholics and drug addicts. (shrink)

Although the principle of respect for personal autonomy has been the subject of debate for almost 40 years, the conversation has often suffered from lack of clarity regarding the philosophical traditions underlying this principle. In this article, I trace a genealogy of autonomy, first contrasting Kant’s autonomy as moral obligation and Mill’s teleological political liberty. I then show development from Mill’s concept to Beauchamp and Childress’ principle and to Julian Savulescu’s non-teleological autonomy sketch. I argue that, although the reach for (...) a new principle to guide choices in physician–patient relationships can rightfully be seen as important, the notion that is now called autonomy within bioethics has corollaries that undermine critical aspects of medical care. As such, there is need for a richer account of the interplay between the free choice of patients and the informed recommendations of doctors. (shrink)

Emphasis on autonomy of texts presupposes that there are perennial concepts. But researchers' expectations may turn history into mythology of ideas; researchers forget that an agent cannot be described as doing something he could not understand as a description, and that thinking may be inconsistent. They will never uncover voluntary oblique strategies and by treating ideas as units will confuse sentences with statements. On the other hand, a contextual approach to the meaning of texts dismisses ideas as unimportant effects. Neither (...) method shows how what was said was meant is crucial for understanding. There are no perennial problems; philosophers of different times do not speak directly to us. But history of ideas helps us recognize the contingency of many of our beliefs. (shrink)

Some biologists now argue in favour of a pluralistic approach to plant activities, understandable both from the classical perspective of physiological mechanisms and that of the biology of behaviour involving choices and decisions in relation to the environment. However, some do not hesitate to go further, such as plant “neurobiologists” or philosophers who today defend an intelligence, a mind or even a plant consciousness in a renewed perspective of these terms. To what extent can we then adhere to pluralism in (...) the study of plant behaviour? How does this pluralism in the study and explanation of plant behaviour fit into, or even build itself up, in a broader history of science? Is it a revolutionary way of rethinking plant behaviour in the twenty-first century or is it an epistemological extension of an older attitude? By proposing a synthesis of the question of plant behaviour by selected elements of the history of botany, the objective is to show that the current plant biology is not unified on the question of behaviour, but that its different tendencies are in fact part of a long botanical tradition with contrasting postures. Two axes that are in fact historically linked will serve as a common thread. 1. Are there several ways of understanding or conceiving plant behaviour within plant sciences and their epistemology? 2. Can the behaviour of a plant be considered in the same way as that of an animal? The working hypothesis defended in this article consists in showing that the current opposition between growth, development and reductionist physiology on the one hand and the biology of behaviour involving sensitivity and choices in plant activity on the other hand has been built up through the history of botany. (shrink)

Perspectival realism combines two apparently contradictory aspects: the epistemic relativity of perspectives and the mind-independence of realism. This paper examines the prospects for a coherent perspectival realism, taking the literature on scientific representation as a starting point. It is argued that representation involves two types of norms, referred to as norms of relevance and norms of accuracy. Norms of relevance fix the domain of application of a theory and the way it categorises the world, and norms of accuracy give the (...) conditions for the theory to be true. Perspectival realism could be made coherent by taking a realist stance towards one type of norm, and a perspectival stance towards the other, by assuming they are relative to a community. This provides two versions of perspectival realism, called relevance perspectivism and accuracy perspectivism. How each option fares with respect to the challenge of incompatible models is examined. Finally, the prospects of full perspectivism are evaluated. (shrink)

Recent debates about disagreement’s significance have largely focused on its _epistemic_ significance. However, given how much attention has already been paid to its epistemic significance, we might well wonder: what significance might disagreement have when we consider other related normative domains? And, in particular, what significance might it have when we consider the broader _domain of inquiry,_ or what some thinkers have called either the “zetetic” or “erotetic” domain? In response, this paper suggest three things. Firstly, it suggests how we (...) might clarify the relations among the epistemic, erotetic, and zetetic domains of normativity, given their potential differences and incompatibilities. Then, it suggests that disagreement’s significance within inquiry can either be tied to erotetic norms or to either of two sorts of zetetic norms: vindication-directed or possession-directed norms. And finally, it suggests preferred answers to the question of what disagreement’s _distinctly_ zetetic significance might be, given the participating inquirers’ ordinarily-conceived zetetic standings and how their sets of dialectically accessible evidence might compare. (shrink)

Existing indexing systems used to arrange philosophical works have been shown to misrepresent the discipline in ways that reflect and perpetuate exclusionary attitudes within it. In recent years, there has been a great deal of effort to challenge those attitudes and to revise them. But as the discipline moves toward greater equality and inclusivity, the way it has indexed its work has unfortunately not. To course correct, we identify in this article some of the specific changes that are needed within (...) current indexing systems and propose a new model that could embody them. We use the Diversity Reading List in Philosophy as a case study and PhilPapers as a basis for comparison. The model we propose not only represents the discipline in a more inclusive and fair way, but it is also efficient, easy to use or implement, and adaptable for a variety of contexts. (shrink)

We revisit Kolchin's results on definability of differential Galois groups of strongly normal extensions, in the case where the field of constants is not necessarily algebraically closed. In certain classes of differential topological fields, which encompasses ordered or p‐valued differential fields, we find a partial Galois correspondence and we show one cannot expect more in general. In the class of ordered differential fields, using elimination of imaginaries in, we establish a relative Galois correspondence for relatively definable subgroups of the group (...) of differential order automorphisms. (shrink)

Ce texte s’inscrit dans le vaste chantier de reprise des expériences micropolitiques, nommées ici « praxis rebelles », à partir de leurs visées inédites de constitution d’un collectif ne répondant plus à la grammaire du politique de la tradition révolutionnaire et posant l’auto-organisation face à la violence destructrice du capital sur la vie. C’est le Collectif Socialiste de Patients (S.P.K.) qui vint au début des années 70 produire une coupure subjective hautement intensive, devant contaminer l’ensemble du champ social afin d’affirmer (...) la lutte de la vie quotidienne contre l’économie de mort. (shrink)

This book offers a defense of the tensed theory of time, a critique of the New Theory of Reference, and an argument that simultaneity is absolute. Although Smith rejects ordinary language philosophy, he shows how it is possible to argue from the nature of language to the nature of reality. Specifically, he argues that semantic properties of tensed sentences are best explained by the hypothesis that they ascribe to events temporal properties of futurity, presentness, or pastness and do not merely (...) ascribe relations of earlier than or simultaneity. He criticizes the New Theory of Reference, which holds that "now" refers directly to a time and does not ascribe the property of presentness. Smith does not adopt the old or Fregean theory of reference but develops a third alternative, based on his detailed theory of de re and de dicto propositions and a theory of cognitive significance. He concludes the book with a lengthy critique of Einstein's theory of time. Smith offers a positive argument for absolute simultaneity based on his theory that all propositions exist in time. He shows how Einstein's relativist temporal concepts are reducible to a conjunction of absolutist temporal concepts and relativist nontemporal concepts of the observable behavior of light rays, rigid bodies, and the like. (shrink)

Taylor analyzes Nietzsche's thoughts on the state, culture and education.

1. In his recent work entitled Augustine and the Mystery of the Church, James K. Lee notes that fragmented approaches to the study of Augustine have unfortunately resulted in unidimensional and red...

This article adopts a bottom-up approach to theory interpretation, following the slogan “meaning is use”, and applies it to quantum mechanics. I argue that it fits very well with the Consistent Histories formulation of quantum mechanics, interpreted in a particular way that is not the interpretation favoured by original proponents of the formulation. I examine the difficulties and advantages of this interpretation.

The “universality” of critical phenomena is much discussed in philosophy of scientific explanation, idealizations and philosophy of physics. Lange and Reutlinger recently opposed Batterman concerning the role of some deliberate distortions in unifying a large class of phenomena, regardless of microscopic constitution. They argue for an essential explanatory role for “commonalities” rather than that of idealizations. Building on Batterman's insight, this article aims to show that assessing the differences between the universality of critical phenomena and two paradigmatic cases of “commonality (...) strategy”—the ideal gas model and the harmonic oscillator model—is necessary to avoid the objections raised by Lange and Reutlinger. Taking these universal explanations as benchmarks for critical phenomena reveals the importance of the different roles played by analogies underlying the use of the models. A special combination of physical and formal analogies allows one to explain the epistemic autonomy of the universality of critical phenomena through an explicative loop. (shrink)

Many activities towards plants are directly related to environmental crisis issues. However, our actions towards plants are little theorized in philosophy and ethics. After a brief presentation of the history, state of the art, and current issues of plant ethics, I critically illustrate how the theoretical threads of current ethics should be clarified, and, more importantly, contextualised, to promote the application of concrete measures. Particular attention is paid to the ethics of plant flourishing as applied to different fields and types (...) of plants. The treatment of wild and ornamental plants is, thus, explicitly distinguished from that of improved agricultural varieties, themselves distinguishable according to modes of cultivation. I thus propose and discuss several recommendations and concrete courses of action to promote an ethics of plants, while pointing out its limitations. (shrink)

Call a (strictly increasing) sequence (rn) of natural numbers regular if it satisfies the following condition: rn+1/rn→θ∈R>1∪{∞} and, if θ is algebraic, then (rn) satisfies a linear recurrence relation whose characteristic polynomial is the minimal polynomial of θ. Our main result states that (Z,+,0,R) is superstable whenever R is enumerated by a regular sequence. We give two proofs of this result. One relies on a result of E. Casanovas and M. Ziegler and the other on a quantifier elimination result. We (...) also show that (Z,+,0,<,R) is NIP whenever R is enumerated by a regular sequence that is ultimately periodic modulo m for all m>1. (shrink)