This 2nd edition of Executive Ethics provides a variety of contemporary and timely readings squarely focused on the ethical dilemmas and challenges faced by today's C-suite executives. In addition to identifying these dilemmas and challenges, the contributors provide both knowledge and insight on how C-suite executives can proactively address such ethics issues. The contributors provide unique value propositions for the C-suite regarding the most critical ethical issues facing organizations today while also highlighting useful information for senior executives interested in integrating (...) ethics into the leadership and management practices of their organizations. In the end, the book empowers C-suite executives to build a long-term, strategic, and enterprise-wide approach to ethics. (shrink)

Ethical sensitivity triggers the entire ethical decision-making process (i.e., recognition of ethical content in work situations). In this article, five factors are examined that affect tax practitioners' professional ethical sensitivity. The five factors that were examined include role conflict, role ambiguity, job satisfaction, professional commitment, and ethical orientation. Ethical content in work situations is examined in relation to professional ethics as enumerated by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant's (AICPA) Statements on Responsibilities in Tax Practice (SRTP). Utilizing Hunt and (...) Vitell's (1986, 1993) General Theory of Ethics, a model of ethical sensitivity was constructed and empirically tested. Role conflict negatively and job satisfaction positively influenced tax practitioners' ethical sensitivity. Also, the covariates of the tax practitioner's professional risk level and type of employer were found to be significant. The significant factors are job specific. The tax firm may have the best opportunity to positively change a tax practitioner's ethical recognition abilities. Professional accounting organizations may need to evaluate if resources should be used to formulate, maintain, and publicize codes of conduct because of the lack of significance of professional commitment. (shrink)

What sorts of things are there in the world? Clearly enough, there are concrete, material things; but are there other things too, perhaps nonconcrete or non-material things? Some people believe that there are such things, which are often called abstract ; purported examples of such objects include numbers, properties, possible but non-actual states of affairs, propositions, and sets. Following a long-standing tradition, I shall describe persons who believe that there are abstract objects as ‘platonists’. In this paper, I shall not (...) directly address the plausibility of platonism, as compared with its rivals; instead, I shall confine my attention to one way in which some people have tried to combine platonism and theism. More specifically, I shall concentrate upon the claim that abstract objects depend upon God ontologically ; I shall argue that platonistic theists should reject DEP in favour of the claim that abstract objects exist independently of God . In order to evaluate the relative merits of DEP versus IND, it will be helpful to examine in some detail a particular articulation of DEP. When it comes to recent work on DEP, we can do no better in this regard than to examine the recent work of Thomas V. Morris and Christopher H. Menzel. According Morris and Menzel, there is a sense in which God literally creates such abstracta through engaging in intellective activities. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty is a persistent problem in the American educational system. The present investigation examined how reports of academic cheating related to students' emphasis on their moral identities and their sensitivity to social evaluation. Seventy college students at a large southeastern university completed a battery of surveys. Symptoms of social anxiety were positively correlated with recall of academic cheating. Additionally, relative to students who placed less importance on their moral identities, students who placed more importance on their moral identities recalled (...) significantly fewer instances of cheating. In summary, these findings suggest that students are less likely to cheat on their school work when they place greater emphasis on their moral identity and are less sensitive to social evaluation. Practical interventions to rampant cheating in American schools are discussed. (shrink)

Recent scholarship in business ethics has revealed the importance of privacy expectations as they relate to implicit privacy norms and the business practices that may violate these expectations. Yet, it is unclear how and when businesses may violate these expectations, factors that form or influence privacy expectations, or whether or not expectations have in fact been violated by company actions. This article reports the findings of three studies exploring how and when the corporate dissemination of consumer data violates privacy expectations. (...) The results indicate that consumer sentiment is more negative following intentional releases of sensitive consumer data, but the effect of data dissemination is more complex than that of company intentionality and data sensitivity alone. Companies can effectively set, and re-affirm, privacy expectations via consent procedures preceding and succeeding data dissemination notifications. Although implied consent has become more widely used in practice, we show how explicit consent outperforms implied consent in these regards. Importantly, this research provides process evidence that identifies perceived violation of privacy expectations as the underlying mechanism to explain the deleterious effects, on consumer sentiment, when company actions are misaligned with consumers’ privacy expectations. Ethical implications for companies collecting and disseminating consumer information are offered. (shrink)

The consideration of ‘mutual benefits’ and partner cooperation have long been the accepted standpoint from which to draw inference about the onset, maintenance and breakdown of the coral‐algae endosymbiosis. In this paper, I review recent research into the climate‐induced breakdown of this important symbiosis (namely ‘coral bleaching’) that challenges the validity of this long‐standing belief. Indeed, I introduce a more parsimonious explanation, in which the coral host exerts a ‘controlled parasitism’ over its algal symbionts that is akin to an enforced (...) domestication arrangement. Far from being pathogenic, a range of well‐established cellular processes are reviewed that support the role of the coral host as an active ‘farmer’ of the energy‐rich photoassimilates from its captive symbionts. Importantly, this new paradigm reposes the deleterious bleaching response in terms of an envelope of environmental conditions in which the exploitative and captive measures of the coral host are severely restricted. The ramification of this new paradigm for developing management strategies that may assist the evolution of bleaching resistance in corals is discussed. (shrink)

Heterogeneity within MDD has hampered identification of biological markers (e.g., intermediate phenotypes, IPs) that might increase risk for the disorder or reflect closer links to the genes underlying the disease process. The newer characterizations of dimensions of MDD within Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) domains may align well with the goal of defining IPs. We compare a sample of 25 individuals with MDD compared to 29 age and education matched controls in multimodal assessment. The multimodal RDoC assessment included the primary IP (...) biomarker, positron emission tomography (PET) with a selective radiotracer for 5-HT1A ([11C]WAY-100635), as well as event-related functional MRI with a Go/No-go task targeting the Cognitive Control network, neuropsychological assessment of affective perception, negative memory bias and Cognitive Control domains. There was also an exploratory genetic analysis with the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and monamine oxidase A (MAO-A) genes. In regression analyses, lower 5-HT1A binding potential (BP) in the MDD group was related to diminished engagement of the Cognitive Control network, slowed resolution of interfering cognitive stimuli, one element of Cognitive Control. In contrast, higher/normative levels of 5-HT1A BP in MDD (only) was related to a substantial memory bias toward negative information, but intact resolution of interfering cognitive stimuli and greater engagement of Cognitive Control circuitry. The serotonin transporter risk allele was associated with lower 1a BP and the corresponding imaging and cognitive IPs in MDD. Lowered 5HT 1a BP was present in half of the MDD group relative to the control group. Lowered 5HT 1a BP may represent a subtype including decreased engagement of Cognitive Control network and impaired resolution of interfering cognitive stimuli. Future investigations might link lowered 1a BP to neurobiological pathways and markers, as well as probing subtype-specific treatment targets. (shrink)

This volume explores the philosophical issues involved in the idea of petitionary prayer, where this is conceived as an activity designed to influence the action of the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good God of traditional theism. Theists have always recognized various logical and moral limits to divine action in the world, but do these limits leave any space among God's reasons for petitionary prayer to make a difference? Petitionary Prayer: A Philosophical Investigation develops a new account of the conditions required for (...) a petitionary prayer to be answered by employing the notion of contrastive explanation. With careful attention to recent developments in metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory, Scott A. Davison surveys the contemporary literature on this question. He considers questions about human freedom and responsibility in relation to different views of divine providence, along with the puzzles inherent in Christian teachings concerning petitionary prayer. Davison develops new challenges to the coherence of the idea of answered petitionary prayer based upon the nature of divine freedom, the limits of human knowledge, and the nature of those good things that require a recipient's permission before they can be given. He proposes new defences, building upon careful analysis of the shortcomings of previous proposals and clarifying the issues for future debate. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge the notion that a healthy and resilient coral is (in all cases) a fast‐growing coral, and by inference, that a reef characterised by a fast trajectory toward high coral cover is necessarily a healthy and resilient reef. Instead, I explain how emerging evidence links fast skeletal extension rates with elevated coral‐algae (symbiotic) respiration rates, most‐often mediated by nutrient‐enlarged symbiont populations and/or rising sea temperatures. Elevated respiration rates can act to reduce the autotrophic capacity (photosynthesis:respiration ratio) (...) of the symbiosis. This restricts the capacity of the coral host to build and maintain sufficient energy reserves (e.g. lipids) needed to sustain essential homeostatic functions, including sexual reproduction and biophysical stress resistance. Moreover, it explains the somewhat paradoxical scenario, whereby at the ecological instant before the reef‐building capacity of the symbiosis is lost, a reef can look visually at its best and be accreting CaCO3 at its maximum. (shrink)

Research programmes are sets of problems preferred on epistemic grounds and including preferred heuristics for inquiry. Charles Lyell's research programme for biogeograpy includes the problem of explaining the distribution of species constrained by laws governing locomotion and containment of species. Included in the programme are laws governing the supernatural introduction of replacement species. Wallace and Darwin derected arguments against the putative intelligibility of this aspect of Lyell's programme before discovering natural selection, and their defence, at this time of natural laws (...) governing the introduction of new species is interesting as a defence of a noval programme of research, not a defence of a proposed theroy. These arguments are presented and an epistemological foundation is offered for them. 1 The author is indebted to a referee for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. (shrink)

We address two major limitations of Schyns et al. First, we clarify their concept of “features” by postulating several levels for processing. The composition of the feature set at each level determines the set at the next higher level, following simple structural guidelines. Second, we show that our proposed framework reconciles feature-creation and fixed-feature approaches.

This chapter discusses the roles of ether and electrons in relativity theory. One of the most radical moves made by Albert Einstein was to dismiss the ether from electrodynamics. His fellow physicists felt challenged by Einstein’s view, and they came up with a variety of responses, ranging from enthusiastic approval, to dismissive rejection. Among the naysayers were the electron theorists, who were unanimous in their affirmation of the ether, even if they agreed with other aspects of Einstein’s theory of relativity. (...) The eventual success of the latter theory (circa 1911) owed much to Hermann Minkowski’s idea of four-dimensional spacetime, which was portrayed as a conceptual substitute of sorts for the ether. (shrink)

Studies using Posner’s spatial cueing paradigm have demonstrated that participants can allocate their attention to specific target locations based on the predictiveness of preceding cues. Four experiments were conducted to investigate attentional orienting processes operating in a high probability condition as compared to a low probability condition using various types of centrally-presented cues. Spatially-informative cues resulted in cueing effects for both probability conditions, with significantly larger CEs in the high probability conditions than the low probability conditions. Participants in the high (...) probability conditions reported little or no awareness of cue–target probabilities after task completion. Our results provide support for an implicit learning account of the proportion valid effect under experimental conditions involving spatially-informative central cues and relatively short stimulus onset asynchronies. (shrink)

A computational modeling approach was used to test one possible explanation for the limited capacity of the subitizing phenomenon. Most existing models of this phenomenon associate the subitizing span with an assumed structural limitation of the human information processing system. In contrast, we show how this limit might emerge as the combinatorics of the space of enumeration problems interacts with the human cognitive architecture in the context of an enumeration task. Subitizing‐like behavior was generated in two different models of enumeration, (...) one based on the ACT‐R cognitive architecture and the other based on the principles of parallel distributed processing (PDP). Our results provide good qualitative fits to results obtained in a variety of empirical studies. (shrink)

The data in this special issue are both encouraging and discouraging. On the positive side, researchers are making theoretical breakthroughs into the psychology of the academic cheater, which may result in practical interventions. Yet the studies illustrate the sheer magnitude of the problem and the resources needed to address unethical behavior among the younger members of the American academe. In short, this special issue shows that the "Internet revolution" facilitates new types of academic dishonesty (Sisti, this issue; Stephens, Young, & (...) Calabrese, this issue); that academic cheating is often an intentional, planned act that results from a Machiavellian tendency to neutralize moral sanctions against cheating (Harding, Mayhew, Finelli, & Carpenter, this issue); that motivations to cheat differ across students (Davy, Kincaid, Smith, & Trawick, this issue; Wowra, this issue); and that academic cheating is a symptom of a larger problem (Lovett-Hooper, Komarraju, Weston, & Dollinger, this issue; Wowra, this issue). (shrink)

Systematic entomology flourished as a branch of Natural History from the 1750s to the end of the nineteenth century. During this interval, the “era of Heroic Entomology,” the majority of workers in the field were dedicated amateurs. This article traces the demographic and occupational shifts in entomology through this 150-year interval and into the early twentieth century. The survey is based on entomologists who studied beetles (Coleoptera), and who named sufficient numbers of species to have their own names abbreviated by (...) subsequent taxonomists. In the eighteenth century, 27 entomologists achieved this level of prominence, of whom 37% were academics, 19% were doctors, 11% had private incomes, 19% were clergymen, and 8% were government officials. Many of those with private incomes were members of the European aristocracy, and all but one were European men. The nineteenth century list included 192 entomologists, of whom 17% were academics, 16% were museum curators, 2% were school teachers, 15% were doctors, 6% were military men, 7% were merchants, 2% were government entomologists, 6% had private incomes, 5% were clergymen, 5% were government officials, and 4% were lawyers. The demographics of entomology shifted dramatically in the nineteenth century. Whereas many of the noteworthy entomologists of the eighteenth century were German, Swedish, or French, in the nineteenth century, many more European countries are represented, and almost one-fifth of the noteworthy entomologists were from the United States. The nineteenth century list, like the eighteenth century list, contains no women. By the twentieth century, 63% of 178 noteworthy systematic entomologists were paid professionals, teaching entomology courses in universities, or studying insect taxonomy in museums and government-sponsored laboratories. Only one person on the twentieth century list had a private income, but women (ten individuals) were included on the list for the first time. (shrink)

This essay differentiates two approaches to understanding the concept of coercion, and argues for the relative merits of the one currently out of fashion. The approach currently dominant in the philosophical literature treats threats as essential to coercion, and understands coercion in terms of the way threats alter the costs and benefits of an agent’s actions; I call this the “pressure” approach. It has largely superseded the “enforcement approach,” which focuses on the powers and actions of the coercer rather than (...) the perspective of the coercee. The enforcement approach identifies coercion with certain uses of the kinds of powers that agents need to accumulate and wield in order to be able to make significant, credible threats. Though there is considerable overlap extensionally in the instances of coercion recognized by the two approaches, the enforcement approach encompasses some uses of power to coerce that do not involve threats . It also circumscribes which threats should be counted as coercive, though notably it provides a picture of coercion that is non-moralized in its essentials. While there may be specific purposes for which a pressure account is to be preferred, I argue that the enforcement approach better describes how coercion works, and elucidates factors that are often tacitly assumed by pressure accounts. It also is more useful for explaining the social and political significance of coercion, and why coercion is thought to have the implications commonly associated with it. In particular, I argue that it helps us understand why uses of coercion are in general a matter of ethical significance, why state authority depends on commanding a monopoly on the right to use coercion, and why being coerced may reasonably provide one a defense against being held responsible for actions one is coerced into taking. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the wholly metaphysical question of whether necessity and possibility rest on nonmodal foundations—whether the truth conditions for modal statements are, in the final analysis, nonmodal. It is argued that Lewis’s modal realism is either arbitrary and stipulative or else it is circular. Even if there were Lewisean possible worlds, they could not provide the grounds for modality. D. M. Armstrong’s combinatorial approach to possibility suffers from similar defects. Since more traditional reductions to cognitive or linguistic (...) facts suffer similar fates, the conclusion that the alethic modality is primitive and incapable of reduction is offered. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the roles of ether and electrons in relativity theory. One of the most radical moves made by Albert Einstein was to dismiss the ether from electrodynamics. His fellow physicists felt challenged by Einstein’s view, and they came up with a variety of responses, ranging from enthusiastic approval, to dismissive rejection. Among the naysayers were the electron theorists, who were unanimous in their affirmation of the ether, even if they agreed with other aspects of Einstein’s theory of relativity. (...) The eventual success of the latter theory (circa 1911) owed much to Hermann Minkowski’s idea of four-dimensional spacetime, which was portrayed as a conceptual substitute of sorts for the ether. (shrink)

This letter corrects errors of fact contained in a review by Yves Gingras of a biopic about Henri Poincaré.

Traditional logical empiricist and more recent historicist positions on the logic of discovery are briefly reviewed and both are found wanting. None have examined the historical detail now available from recent research on Darwin, from which there is evidence for gradual transition in descriptive and explanatory concepts. This episode also shows that revolutionary research can be directed by borrowed metascientific objectives and heuristics from other disciplines. Darwin's own revolutionary research took place within an ontological context borrowed from non evolutionary predecessors (...) with methodological objectives borrowed from and justified by their success in Newton's physics. The logic of discovery is not a special form of inference from observation to theory, but rather a theory of the rationality of research, including principles bearing upon the rational choice of problems, or epistemic objectives, and heuristic, or means to solving the problems. Such choices can be justified only locally in the context of a relatively stable background ontology and substantive epistemology, not globally for all science. (shrink)

Traditional theists believe that there exists an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly loving, and perfectly good God. They also believe that God created the world, sustains it in being from moment to moment, and providentially guides all events, in accordance with a plan, towards a good ending. Historically, most traditional theists have believed that God sometimes answers prayers for particular things. In keeping with the literature on this subject, these prayers are referred to as ‘petitionary prayers’. This article discusses several problems related (...) to the concept of the traditional theistic God's answering petitionary prayers. (shrink)

Atrial natriuretic peptides appear to elicit their actions in some target tissues by binding to a novel cell‐surface transmembrane protein which possesses both peptide binding and guanylate cyclase activities. Ligand binding stimulates enzyme activity to produce increased intracellular concentrations of cyclic GMP which, in turn, mediates the cell's physiological response.

The reception of Poincaré’s conventionalist doctrine of space by mathematicians is studied for the period 1891–1911. The opposing view of Riemann and Helmholtz, according to which the geometry of space is an empirical question, is shown to have swayed several geometers. This preference is considered in the context of changing views of the nature of space in theoretical physics, and with respect to structural and social changes within mathematics. Included in the latter evolution is the emergence of non-Euclidean geometry as (...) a new sub-discipline. (shrink)

Genetic analysis of Drosophila has shown that a morphogenetic gradient of the Transforming Growth Factor‐β family member dpp patterns the embryonic dorsalventral axis. Molecular and embryological evidence from Xenopus has strongly suggested a similar role for Bmp‐4, the dpp homolog, in patterning the dorsalventral axis of chordates. A recent report has now identified mutations in two genes, dino and swirl, that disrupt dorsal‐ventral patterning in the zebrafish Danio rerio(1). Characterization of these mutations parallels findings from Drosophila, thus establishing a genetic (...) framework for the analysis of dorsalventral patterning in a vertebrate. (shrink)

The practices of economists increase experimental reproducibility relative to those of selected psychologists but should not be universally adopted. Procedures criticized by Hertwig and Ortmann as producing variable data are valuable, instead, for generating questions. The procedure of choice should depend on the theoretical goal: measure a known factor or learn what factors are important and need to be measured.

Several prominent theorists have recently advocated reconceptualizing rape as “nonconsensual sex,” omitting the traditional “force” element of the crime. I argue that such a conceptualization fails to capture what is distinctively problematic about rape for women and why rape is pivotal in supporting women’s gender oppression. I argue that conceptualizing rape as coerced sex can replace both the force and nonconsent elements and thereby remedies some of the main difficulties with extant definitions, especially in recognizing “acquaintance” rape as such. I (...) argue that this approach helps explain its distinctive badness both for the individual victims and for women as a group. (shrink)

A plausible explanation of the wrongfulness of threatening, advanced most explicitly by Mitchell Berman, is that the wrongfulness of threatening derives from the wrongfulness of the act threatened. This essay argues that this explanation is inadequate. We can learn something important about the wrongfulness of threatening (with implications for thinking about coercion) by comparing credible threats to some other claims of impending harm. A credible bluff threat to do harm is likely to be more and differently wrongful than making intentionally (...) false warnings about other sources of harm. This essay surveys some examples to secure this point, shows that Berman's moralized account of their wrongfulness is wanting, and offers the outline of an approach better suited to explain the wrongfulness of threatening.1. (shrink)

In ‘Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence’ E. J. Lowe defends “serious essentialism”. Serious essentialism is the position that (a) everything has an essence, (b) essences are not themselves things, and (c) essences are the ground for metaphysical necessity and possi- bility. Lowe’s defence of serious essentialism is both metaphysical and epistemological. In what follows I use Lowe’s discussion as a point of departure for, first, adding some considerations for the plausi- bility of essentialismand, second, somework onmodal epistemology.