This paper examines the perceived ethical values of Malaysian managers. It is based on the opinions of 15 hypothetical ethical/unethical business situations from the 81 managers who agreed to participate in the survey. The findings of this study showed that these Malaysian managers have high ethical values. However 53% of the respondents believed that the ethical standards of today are lower than that of 15 years ago. Apparently, this is related to the existence of many unethical business practices prevalent in (...) the modern business world. The behavior of one's immediate superior is the most important factor in influencing managers to commit unethical practices. The results also indicate only a slight variation among the managers in terms of perceived ethical values by virtue of job position, job specialization, type of business activity or the size of the business organization. (shrink)

Societies are composed of groups that interact. Symbiotic groups are those in which agents complement each other in resources that they have in excess. Symbiotic groups are useful especially when the resources in an environment are distributed unevenly, because they enable agents to trade resources easily. However, for trading to happen successfully, agents in symbiotic groups need to cooperate, i.e., they should be willing to donate resources when appropriate. Similarly, if some agents in a symbiotic group are defectors, they should (...) be identified by others and eliminated from the group for the well-being of the remaining agents. Accordingly, we first study Edmonds’ tag-based model of symbiotic groups to understand the lifespan of symbiotic groups (e.g., why some groups live shorter than others). Then, we enhance Edmonds’ model by adding the capability of reciprocal interactions to agents, thus achieving a hybrid model. We capture reciprocity in three different models and study their effects on the elimination of defectors in symbiotic groups. Our experimental results show that the groups that are built with the proposed hybrid model can eliminate more defectors and earlier than tag-based models. Further, the hybrid approach can generate symbiotic groups more effectively and efficiently. (shrink)

Hare questions the claim made by modern intuitionists and deontologists that Kant is their ally against utilitarianism. The core of the chapter is a discussion of Kant's Categorial Imperative, which is shown to be compatible, in its various formulations, with utilitarianism. Conspicuously anti‐utilitarian elements of Kantian ethics, Hare argues, are based on principles extrinsic to, and sometimes incompatible with, Kant's moral theory. In answering possible objections to his interpretation, Hare firstly distinguishes pure from applied ethics, which includes an important distinction (...) between Kant's notions of Wille and Willkür; and, secondly, he argues that Kant can be understood as a consequentialist. (shrink)

Dancy (philosophy, Florida State U.) presents two new interpretations of the evidence regarding the metaphysical ideas of two important figures in Plato's Academy, Eudoxus and Speusippus, and of Aristotle's reaction to those ideas.

Little progress has been made in classifying the manuscript tradition of Livy's First Decade since Frigell published his Livianorum Librorum Primae Decadis Emendandae Ratio . This laid the foundations of a serious analysis of the manuscripts, but was hampered by the fact that full evidence was not available at that date. The deficiency was made good by the Oxford editors, who, however, failed to make use of their evidence to explore in detail the inter relation of the manuscripts. Walters indeed (...) disclaims its importance : ‘Further in stemmata-making I decline to go, for “stemmata quid faciunt?” except much stereotyped mischief.’. (shrink)

In a previous article I attempted to show the relationship between the most important MSS. of the Aethiopica, and to fix the basis on which the text ought to be built. The object of the present enquiry is to go more deeply into the history of the Xylander MS., which was only lightly touched upon then, and to estimate the value of another MS., which received no treatment at all.

The work of Sinden et al. suggests that it may be possible to produce improvement in the areas of brain function by transplanting brain tissue. What appears to be the limiting factor is not the complexity of the mental process under consideration but the discreteness of the lesion which causes the impairment and the appropriateness and accuracy of placement of the grafted tissue.