The debate over environmental, health, and safety regulation has reached a new crescendo in the 104th Congress. So impassioned is the debate on occasion, and so high the feelings, that even the tools of regulatory analysis have become part of the combat.To some, the term cost-benefit analysis, for example, is virtually a swearword, a nefarious tool used by big business to undermine regulations aimed at benefiting the people at large. To others, it is the mechanism for achieving more effective regulation (...) at less cost.This new book on the subject of reforming regulation is aimed at increasing the light and turning down the heat. It consists of an introduction and nine chapters written by scientists, public policy analysts, and economists on various aspects of regulation and regulatory analysis.The book advances the latest knowledge and evidence on risk analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and related techniques for improving regulation--all based on experience and data accumulated over the quarter century since regulation in the areas of environment, health, and safety became a major player on the governmental stage. The strengths and limitations of those analytical tools are an important part of the portrait that is painted, but a common thesis is that, properly used, the tools can be helpful in getting better regulatory results. (shrink)

Corporate governance and finance are dynamic academic fields that offer myriad opportunities for business ethics analysis. Within the corporate governance triad in recent years, shareholders have increased their power over boards of directors and executives through both regulation and movements to change corporate by-laws. The impact of board characteristics on firm performance has proven elusive, leading to questions concerning board processes and individual director beliefs and behaviors. At the same time, CEOs have lost considerable power, leaving many struggling to regain (...) their control and maintain their compensation levels, while others adopt a stewardship approach to their posts. In the field of finance, the recent financial debacle has led to a reexamination of financial regulation and of the fundamental nature and purpose of the industry. All of these issues provide business ethicists fodder for investigation and analysis. (shrink)

Hahn boldly corrects the misconceptions of Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy and explains the specific Newtonian model used by Kant to construct his own philosophy in the _Critique of Pure Reason. _ Relying on resources familiar to Kant—Newton’s _Opticks _and _Principia _and especially Christian von Wolff’s commentary on scientific method—Hahn argues that Kant viewed Copernicus as the proponent of a novel hypothesis while seeing Newton as the formulator of a rigorously deductive method. Intellectual revolutions, for Kant, are signaled (...) by the formulation of rigorous deductions. The revolution that Kant proposes to effect in the _Critique of Pure Reason _is based on Newton’s deductive method, not the hypothesis of Copernicus. Thus, the commonplace that Kant effects a Copernican revolution misrepresents Kant’s expressed views on the matter, it distorts Kant’s view of Copernicus, and it misleads us in our efforts to understand what the revolution in natural science meant to him, as the very model on which his metaphysics rests. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between individual differences in executive functions (EF; assessed by measures of working memory, Stroop, trail making, and verbal fluency) and ability to down-regulate and up-regulate responses to emotionally evocative film clips. To ensure a wide range of EF, 48 participants with diverse neurodegenerative disorders and 21 older neurologically normal ageing participants were included. Participants were exposed to three different movie clips that were designed to elicit a mix of disgust and amusement. While watching the films (...) they were either instructed to watch, down-regulate, and up-regulate their visible emotional responses. Heart rate and facial behaviours were monitored throughout. Emotion regulatory ability was operationalised as changes in heart rate and facial behaviour in the down- and up-regulation conditions, controlling for responses in the watch condition. Results indicated that higher verbal fluency scores were related to greater ability to regulate emotion in both the down-regulation and up-regulation conditions. This finding remained significant even after controlling for age and general cognitive functioning. No relationships were found between emotion regulation and the other EF measures. We believe these results derive from differences among EF measures, with verbal-fluency performance best capturing the complex sequence of controlled planning, activation, and monitoring required for successful emotion regulation. These findings contribute to our understanding of emotion–cognition interaction, suggesting a link between emotion-regulatory abilities and individual differences in complex executive functions. (shrink)

Academic freedom and tenure, both cherished institutions of higher education, are currently under attack by many both outside and within the academy. Richard DeGeorge argues that they can be defended on ethical grounds only if they are joined with appropriate accountability, publicly articulated and defended standards, and conscientious enforcement of these standards by academic institutions and the members of the academic community.

In this essay on ancient architectural technologies, I propose to challenge the largely conventional idea of the transcendent origins of philosophy, that philosophy dawned only when the mind turned inside, away from the world grasped by the body and senses. By focusing on one premier episode in the history of western thinking – the emergence of Greek philosophical thought in the cosmic architecture of Anaximander of Miletus – I am arguing that the abstract, speculative, rationalising thinking characteristic of philosophy, is (...) indeed rooted in practical activities, and emerges by means of them rather than in repudiation of them. The spirit of rational inquiry emerged from several factors but the contributing role of monumental architecture and building technologies has been vastly under-appreciated. In the process of figuring out how to build on an enormous scale that the eastern Greeks had never before tried, the architects discovered and revealed nature’s order in their thaumata, the very experience with which Aristotle claims that philosophy begins. Ancient architecture and building technologies were on display for decades with monumental temple building. In front of Anaximander and his community, a new vision of nature spawned that, surprisingly, humans could grasp and command. The building of these thaumata, these objects of wonder, offered proof of the human capacity to control nature, and opened a new vision of our human rational capacity to understand the world and our place in it. (shrink)

Why does performing certain tasks cause the aversive experience of mental effort and concomitant deterioration in task performance? One explanation posits a physical resource that is depleted over time. We propose an alternative explanation that centers on mental representations of the costs and benefits associated with task performance. Specifically, certain computational mechanisms, especially those associated with executive function, can be deployed for only a limited number of simultaneous tasks at any given moment. Consequently, the deployment of these computational mechanisms carries (...) an opportunity cost – that is, the next-best use to which these systems might be put. We argue that the phenomenology of effort can be understood as the felt output of these cost/benefit computations. In turn, the subjective experience of effort motivates reduced deployment of these computational mechanisms in the service of the present task. These opportunity cost representations, then, together with other cost/benefit calculations, determine effort expended and, everything else equal, result in performance reductions. In making our case for this position, we review alternative explanations for both the phenomenology of effort associated with these tasks and for performance reductions over time. Likewise, we review the broad range of relevant empirical results from across sub-disciplines, especially psychology and neuroscience. We hope that our proposal will help to build links among the diverse fields that have been addressing similar questions from different perspectives, and we emphasize ways in which alternative models might be empirically distinguished. (shrink)

The passage which occurs in Plato's Philebus 25C8-E2 examines the relation between three of four classes of Being which are introduced at 23C. Problems with the text and explication of the passage are considered. Ibis paper attempts to illuminate two central issues of the later dialogues on which the interpretation of this passage rests, the significance of πέρς or the limiting class of Being, and the overall operation of συναγωγή or collection, characterizing the method of diairesis, the foundation of the (...) later dialectic.This paper argues for the need to emend the text to read συμμισγομένων (or even συγγιγνομένων) since this is the significance required by the context; to take the referrent of έϗείνη to be πέρατος γέννα; and to understand άπείρου γέννα and πέρατος γέννα as the referrents of τούτων άμκροτέων. (shrink)

_Detailed study of how Anaximander’s cosmological and philosophical conceptions were affected by architectural technologies._.

This paper examines contemporary attempts to explicate the explanatory role of mathematics in the physical sciences. Most such approaches involve developing so-called mapping accounts of the relationships between the physical world and mathematical structures. The paper argues that the use of idealizations in physical theorizing poses serious difficulties for such mapping accounts. A new approach to the applicability of mathematics is proposed.

This volume is a collection of fourteen essays by leading philosophers on issues concerning the nature, existence, and our knowledge of animal minds. The nature of animal minds has been a topic of interest to philosophers since the origins of philosophy, and recent years have seen significant philosophical engagement with the subject. However, there is no volume that represents the current state of play in this important and growing field. The purpose of this volume is to highlight the state of (...) the debate. The issues which are covered include whether and to what degree animals think in a language or in iconic structures, possess concepts, are conscious, self-aware, metacognize, attribute states of mind to others, and have emotions, as well as issues pertaining to our knowledge of and the scientific standards for attributing mental states to animals. (shrink)

Among discrete emotions, basic emotions are the most elemental; most distinct; most continuous across species, time, and place; and most intimately related to survival-critical functions. For an emotion to be afforded basic emotion status it must meet criteria of: (a) distinctness (primarily in behavioral and physiological characteristics), (b) hard-wiredness (circuitry built into the nervous system), and (c) functionality (provides a generalized solution to a particular survival-relevant challenge or opportunity). A set of six emotions that most clearly meet these criteria (enjoyment, (...) anger, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness) and three additional emotions (relief/contentment, interest, love) for which the evidence is not yet quite as strong is described. Empirical approaches that are most and least useful for establishing basic-emotion status are discussed. Basic emotions are thought to have a central organizing mechanism and to have the capacity to influence behavior, thoughts, and other fundamental processes. (shrink)

Robert Batterman examines a form of scientific reasoning called asymptotic reasoning, arguing that it has important consequences for our understanding of the scientific process as a whole. He maintains that asymptotic reasoning is essential for explaining what physicists call universal behavior. With clarity and rigor, he simplifies complex questions about universal behavior, demonstrating a profound understanding of the underlying structures that ground them. This book introduces a valuable new method that is certain to fill explanatory gaps across disciplines.

We examine the following consequentialist view of virtue: a trait is a virtue if and only if it has good consequences in some relevant way. We highlight some motivations for this basic account, and offer twelve choice points for filling it out. Next, we explicate Julia Driver’s consequentialist view of virtue in reference to these choice points, and we canvass its merits and demerits. Subsequently, we consider three suggestions that aim to increase the plausibility of her position, and critically analyze (...) them. We conclude that one of those proposed revisions would improve her account. NOTE: I will self-archive the paper after the 24 month embargo period ends. If you want a copy, just email me. (shrink)

Uses textual and archaeological evidence to argue that emerging Egyptian and Greek architectural technologies were crucial to the origins and development of Greek philosophy.

This article discusses minimal model explanations, which we argue are distinct from various causal, mechanical, difference-making, and so on, strategies prominent in the philosophical literature. We contend that what accounts for the explanatory power of these models is not that they have certain features in common with real systems. Rather, the models are explanatory because of a story about why a class of systems will all display the same large-scale behavior because the details that distinguish them are irrelevant. This story (...) explains patterns across extremely diverse systems and shows how minimal models can be used to understand real systems. (shrink)

This research study sought to identify whether there is a relationship between ethical perceptions and culture. An examination of the cultural variables suggests that there is a relationship between two of Hofstede's cultural dimensions (i.e., Uncertainty Avoidance and Individualism) and ethical perceptions. This finding supports the hypothetical linkage between the cultural environment and the perceived ethical problem variables posited in Hunt and Vitell's General Theory of Marketing Ethics (1986).

This paper looks at emergence in physical theories and argues that an appropriate way to understand socalled “emergent protectorates” is via the explanatory apparatus of the renormalization group. It is argued that mathematical singularities play a crucial role in our understanding of at least some well-defined emergent features of the world.

The present study sought to determine the extent to which individuals'' ethical ideologies, as measured by Forsyth''s (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ), impacted the degree of punishment they advocated for differing ethical infractions, as well as their selection of non-ethics related variables that might be used to modify judgments of disciplinary action. The data revealed that individual ideology does impact both advocated punishment and choice of non-ethics related variables, but only in some measures. The data are discussed in terms of (...) potential moderating variables that could be examined in future studies. (shrink)

Industrial wind turbines (IWTs) are being installed at a fast pace globally. Researchers, medical practitioners, and media have reported adverse health effects resulting from living in the environs of IWTs. While there have been some anecdotal reports from technicians and other workers who work in the environs of IWTs, little is known about the occupational health sector. The purpose of this case study is to raise awareness about the potential for adverse health effects occurring among workers. The authors propose that (...) there is a need for research regarding occupational worker exposure relating to IWTs. (shrink)