Since the 1970s, animal advocacy groups have attempted to improve the treatment of non-human animals by influencing public opinion and lobbying for legislation that protects animals. Empirical assessments of these efforts have reported mixed results. Animal advocacy groups also use litigation as a means of improving the treatment of nonhuman animals, but there has been limited empirical testing of the effectiveness of animal advocacy litigation. To fill this gap in the literature, this study examines the 188 animal law cases decided (...) in state supreme courts from 1973 through 2005. It looks specifically at whether the participation of an animal advocacy organization increases the chance of a favorable decision, while controlling for legal and political influences on case outcomes. Logistic regression reveals that the presence of animal advocacy groups does not exert a statistically significant impact on case outcomes. Further analysis demonstrates, however, that animal advocacy groups are significantly more likely than nongroup litigators to pursue cases that are difficult to win. (shrink)

Nonhuman animal studies scholars have extensively investigated attitudes on animal welfare in general and farm animal welfare in particular. Thus far, this research has focused mainly on public opinion, but there has been minimal research seeking to explain the influences on actual policymakers when they vote on farm animal welfare legislation. This paper contributes to this literature by quantitatively analyzing 216 state legislators’ votes on two farm animal welfare bills. It hypothesizes that the representatives’ personal and representational connections with agriculture (...) best explain their votes on these farm animal protection bills. This research also includes three control variables: each legislator’s gender, race/ethnicity, and political party. Logistic regression revealed that the legislators’ personal and representational connections with agriculture are significant, but political party is the strongest independent variable explaining state legislators’ farm animal welfare votes. An interaction model revealed mixed evidence that political party moderates the influence of agriculture. (shrink)

In this book philosophers, scholars of religion, and activists address the theme of responsibility. Barbara Darling-Smith brings together an enlightening collection of essays that analyze the ethics of responsibility, its relational nature, and its global struggle.

An introduction to and critique of the latest trends in critical theory.

Merchant and Rockness (1994, p. 92) characterize earnings management as "probably the most important ethical issue facing the accounting profession" and provide initial evidence of the ethical judgments of various organizational members. The current study extends their work by examining the extent to which an individual''s ethically-related judgments in response to earnings management activities are associated with the individual''s role.In an experimental study, evening MBA students read three hypothetical scenarios involving a manager engaging in earnings management. The scenarios involved a (...) gain from an operating activity, a gain from an accounting activity, and a loss from an accounting activity. Before reading the cases, however, participants were randomly assigned to one of three roles: a shareholder, another manager from the company who is unfamiliar with the manager in the case, or another manager from the company who is familiar with the manager in the case. Following each case, participants made four ethically related judgments. (shrink)

The Pathology of Man is the first comprehensive study of the psychology and epistemology of human evil, long urged by leading psychiatrists and psychologists, including Freud, Jung, Menninger, Fromm, and Peck. The book breaks new ground by offering a clear, empirically based, and theoretically sound understanding of human evil as a widespread, real, non-metaphorical pathology. With deliberate and thorough scholarship the author proposes a new framework-relative theory of disease and justifies the provocative thesis that human evil should be classified as (...) a pathology which is not a deviation from an accepted norm, but rather is a normal state. This break with tradition provides the necessary psychological foundation for the familiar concept of the banality of human evil, a foundation which in the past it has lacked. (shrink)

What is the role of the imagination in scientific practice? Here I focus on the nature and role of invitations to imagine in certain scientific texts as represented by the example of Einstein’s Special Relativity paper from 1905. Drawing on related discussions in aesthetics, I argue, on the one hand, that this role cannot be simply subsumed under ‘supposition’ but that, on the other, concerns about the impact of genre and symbolism can be dealt with, and hence present no obstacle (...) to regarding imagination as appropriately belief-like. By applying the framework of ‘semi- propositional representations’ and ‘quasi-truth’ to this case I thereby offer a new unitary framework for understanding the epistemology of scientific imagination. (shrink)

The view that quantum particles cannot be regarded as individuals was articulated in the early days of the 'quantum revolution' and became so well-entrenched that French and Krause called it 'the Received View'. However it was subsequently shown that quantum statistics is in fact compatible with a metaphysics of particle individuality, subject to certain caveats. As a consequent it has been claim that there exists a kind of underdetermination of the metaphysics by the physics which in turn has been used (...) to motivate a form of 'notice' structural realism. In this essay I will review this purported underdetermination and the motivation for structural realism that it purportedly provides in the context of recent developments in both the philosophy of physics and metaphysics. I aim to conclude that such developments reinforce the underdetermination and allow one to respond to certain critical concerns regarding its motivational power. (shrink)

CEO compensation has received much attention from both academics and regulators. However, academics have given scant attention to understanding judgments about CEO compensation by third parties such as investors. Our study contributes to the ethics literature on CEO compensation by examining whether judgments about CEO compensation are influenced by two aspects of a company’s tone at the top—social ties between the CEO and members of the Executive Compensation Committee and the CEO’s Reputation, particularly for financial reporting and disclosures. Although, stock (...) exchanges such as NASDAQ require ECC members to be independent, CEOs still may have social connections to the ECC. In addition, CEOs develop a reputation for the quality of their company’s financial reporting and disclosures. We expect both CEO Social Ties and CEO Reputation to impact say-on-pay judgments, and that fairness perceptions about the CEO compensation will mediate the relationship. We conduct an experiment to test our hypotheses. In this study, we employ a two by two experimental design where we manipulate CEO Social Ties with members of the ECC and CEO Reputation for the quality of financial reporting disclosures . Participants were MBA students who provided a say-on-pay judgment , and judgments about the fairness of the CEO’s compensation. Results indicate that CEO Social Ties affected participants’ say-on-pay judgments, which were fully mediated by their perceptions about fairness of the CEO’s compensation. Further, the CEO’s Reputation also affected participants’ say-on-pay judgments, which were fully mediated by their perceptions about fairness of the CEO’s compensation. Implications for research and public policy are presented. (shrink)

Although Eddington's philosophy of physics has been subjected to critical re-evaluation in recent years, neither the exact nature of his structuralist views nor his response to criticism by the likes of Braithwaite have been made clear. In this paper I trace, in particular, the incorporation into Eddington's structuralism of the non-classical indistinguishability of quantum objects. His metaphysical view of such objects as the product of group-theoretical analysis is crucial for understanding his response to Braithwaite's criticisms of the whole structuralist endeavor. (...) These criticisms closely resemble more recent attacks on structural realism in the philosophy of science. I conclude with a brief comparison between these more modern forms of structuralism and Eddington's. (shrink)

Howard argues that the existence of unitarily inequivalent representations in Quantum Field Theory presents a problem for structural realism in this context. I consider two potential ways round this problem: 1), follow Wallace in adopting the 'naive' Lagrangian form of QFT with cut-offs; 2), adapt Ruetsche's 'Swiss Army Knife' approach. The first takes us into the current debate between Wallace and Fraser on conventional vs. algebraic QFT. The second involves consideration of the role of inequivalent representations in understanding spontaneous symmetry (...) breaking and quantum statistics. In both cases, I suggest, the structural realist has sufficient room to manoeuvre. (shrink)

Drawing upon research in philosophical logic, linguistics and cognitive science, this study explores how our ability to use and understand language depends upon our capacity to keep track of complex features of the contexts in which we converse.

According to the substantialist, substances should be regarded as the fundamental ontological category. It is substances that are the bearer of properties, that are causally efficacious and that compose the things we see and touch around us. Cumpa has argued that this metaphysics fits poorly with classical physics and Buonomo has extended this argument into the quantum realm. After reviewing their claims, I shall argue that simple reflection on the form of the Standard Model also undermines substantialism. I will then (...) explore Dasgupta’s qualitative factualism in this context before suggesting that modern physics does not compel us to adopt such a stance. The alternative is to adopt a form of structuralism which, although it may be rendered compatible with factualism, can also stand as a ‘third way’ between these stances. (shrink)

This paper examines three programmatic responses to the problem of cognitive bias: virtue epistemology, epistemic paternalism, and epistemic collectivism. Each of these programmes focuses on asinglelevel of epistemic analysis: virtue theorists on individuals, paternalists on environments, and collectivists on groups. I argue that this is a mistake in light of the fact that cognitive biases arise frominteractionsbetween these three domains. Consequently, epistemologists should spend less time defending these programmes, and more timecoordinatingthem. This paper offers empirically based arguments for the interactionist (...) approach, and contends that its adoption is an essential step for minimizing bias in empirical science. (shrink)

The task of producing a comprehensive, single‐volume treatment of Buddhist philosophy presents certain editorial challenges, not the least of which is the problem of how to do justice to the sheer breadth and diversity of a tradition that spans some two and a half millennia. This introductory chapter of A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy sheds some light on the considerations that shaped the structure and content of the book.

In broadcast news interviews, interviewees will occasionally address the interviewer by name. As a method of establishing the directionality of talk, address terms are redundant in this institutional context because the normative question/answer activity structure and associated participation framework make the direction of address transparent and knowable in advance. But address terms can be deployed in the service of a variety of actions beyond addressing per se. Some of these involve disaligning actions such as topic shifts, non-conforming responses, and disagreements. (...) Others involve the presentation of views as particularly significant or sincere. Address terms are thus a resource for managing certain expressive properties of talk, as well as its disalignment from prior talk. (shrink)

War, Richard Norman reminds us, is treated as the great exception to the strong moral prohibition against the killing of other humans. Despite the widespread belief that war is, in many cases, permissible, its morally exceptional character suggests that there is a strong presumption against its permissibility. Norman argues that this presumption cannot be successfully rebutted and, in particular, that just-war theory, which attempts to provide such a rebuttal, fails in this endeavor. But Norman’s work is more than a critique (...) of just-war theory. He also takes up the more general task of demonstrating the basis of the moral presumption against war, that is, the basis and the nature of the prohibition against killing. This is a necessary preliminary, for only when we understand the prohibition can we adequately address the question whether the presumption against war that it establishes can be sustained. Norman provides interesting and subtle arguments concerning both the prohibition against killing and the just-war rebuttal to the presumption against war, but in the end it is not clear that his position can be coherently distinguished from the just-war position he criticizes. (shrink)

Most readers of Spinoza treat him as a pure metaphysician, a grim determinist, or a stoic moralist, but none of these descriptions captures the author of the _Ethics, _argues Steven B. Smith in this intriguing book. Offering a new reading of Spinoza’s masterpiece, Smith asserts that the Ethics is a celebration of human freedom and its attendant joys and responsibilities and should be placed among the great founding documents of the Enlightenment. Two aspects of Smith’s book distinguish it from (...) other studies. It treats the famous “geometrical method” of the _Ethics _as_ _a form of moral rhetoric, a model for the construction of individuality. And it presents the _Ethics _as_ _a companion to Spinoza’s major work of political philosophy, the _Theologico-Political Treatise, _each work helping to explore the problem of freedom. Affirming Spinoza’s centrality for both critics and defenders of modernity, the book will be of value to students of political theory, philosophy, and intellectual history. (shrink)

I examine Robert Brandom's reading of the classical pragmatists, as given in his new book Perspectives on Pragmatism: Classical, Recent, and Contemporary. I argue that his reading is deficient in certain fundamental respects, and that this deficiency illuminates important blind spots in Brandom's overall theoretical project. Specifically, I focus on Brandom's rationalist pragmatism and its rejection of the classical pragmatic conception of experience. I argue that this rejection is based on an overly instrumental reading of the classical figures, as well (...) as on an incorrect interpretation of them as succumbing to the Myth of the Given. My overall goal is to demonstrate that Brandom is lead astray in his encounter with the classical pragmatists because of his unwillingness to integrate into his theoretical picture the essentially embodied nature of human cognitive and practical activity. (shrink)

In her new book The American Pragmatists Cheryl Misak provides a reading of the history of American Pragmatism in which it is composed of two related yet distinct types of pragmatism. She characterizes the debate between these two types of pragmatism as a debate between those who assert (or whose view entails) that there is no truth and objectivity to be had anywhere and those who take pragmatism to promise an account of truth that preserves our cognitive aspiration of getting (...) things right. O... (shrink)

This paper is prompted by the charge that the prevailing Western paradigm of medical knowledge is essentially Cartesian. Hence, illness, disease, disability, etc. are said to be conceived of in Cartesian terms. The paper attempts to make use of the critique of Cartesianism in medicine developed by certain commentators, notably Leder (1992), in order to expose Cartesian commitments in conceptions of disability. The paper also attempts to sketch an alternative conception of disability — one partly inspired by the work of (...) Merleau-Ponty. In particular, three key Cartesian claims are identified and subjected to criticism. These are as follows: (a) The claim that the body is an object, (b) what is termed here ‘the modularity thesis’, and (c) the claim that the body cannot be constitutive of the self (i.e. since the soul/mind/brain is). In opposition to these claims, it is argued that the body is properly viewed as a subject; that there are neither purely mental, nor purely physical disabilities; and that selves are constituted, at least in part, by their bodies. (shrink)

This book describes the application of Artificial Life simulation to evolutionary scenarios of wide ethical interest, including the evolution of altruism, rape and abortion, providing a new meaning to “experimental philosophy”. The authors also apply evolutionary ALife techniques to explore contentious issues within evolutionary theory itself, such as the evolution of aging. They justify these uses of simulation in science and philosophy, both in general and in their specific applications here.Evolving Ethics will be of interest to researchers, enthusiasts, students and (...) interested lay readers in the fields of Artificial Life, philosophy of science, ethics, agent- and individual-based modeling in ecology and the social sciences, computer simulation, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and the social sciences.Dr Steven Mascaro is a researcher in computer simulation and Artificial Life.Dr Kevin Korb is a Reader in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University.Dr Ann Nicholson is an Associate Professor in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University.Owen Woodberry is a researcher in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University. (shrink)

The ArgumentDespite more than fifty years of debate on the Merton thesis, there have been few attempts to substantiate Merton's argument through empirically based comparative studies. This study of the Jesuit scientific tradition is intended to serve as a test of some of Merton's central claims.Jesuit science is remarkable for its scope and longevity, and is distinguished by its markedly empirical and utilitarian orientation. In this paper I examine the ideological structure of the Society of Jesus and find at its (...) core an “apostolic spirituality” that explains the legitimation of these forms of science within the Society. The values of apostolic spirituality strongly encouraged an activist mentality among Jesuits, which in turn led to the formation of apostolates in education, at court, and in the overseas missions. The values associated with apostolic spirituality led to the initial acceptance of active-empirical sciences within the Society, which became established as traditions because they were useful in fulfilling the goals of the Society's apostolates.This study, by providing a qualified confirmation of Merton's central claims, suggests the importance of a supra-confessional sanctification of labor and learning in the growth of active-empirical sciences. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We must, Isaiah Berlin argues, make tragic tradeoffs as we navigate the clash of incommensurable and irreconcilable values and ends of modernity. To deny this is to succumb to a politics of immaturity, and to the totalitarian temptation. The twentieth century taught that to resist final-solution fantasies, we must resist the allure, if not reject the value, of positive liberty, the liberty of self-mastery and self-rule. Two decades in, has the twenty-first century taught a different lesson? Have we learned (...) that negative liberty, liberty from rule, with its antipaternalistic ethic of ultra-individualism, harbors its own politics of immaturity, and a demagogic temptation? I argue that this is the more frequent, if less fatal, threat to human dignity and decency today, and that we therefore ought to rebalance the scales in the tragic tradeoff of positive for negative liberty. (shrink)

The presence of asymmetry in the human cerebral hemispheres is detectable at both the macroscopic and microscopic scales. The horizontal expansion of cortical surface during development (within individual brains), and across evolutionary time (between species), is largely due to the proliferation and spacing of the microscopic vertical columns of cells that form the cortex. In the asymmetric planum temporale (PT), minicolumn width asymmetry is associated with surface area asymmetry. Although the human minicolumn asymmetry is not large, it is estimated to (...) account for a surface area asymmetry of approximately 9% of the region’s size. Critically, this asymmetry of minicolumns is absent in the equivalent areas of the brains of other apes. The left-hemisphere dominance for processing speech is thought to depend, partly, on a bias for higher resolution processing across widely spaced minicolumns with less overlapping dendritic fields, whereas dense minicolumn spacing in the right hemisphere is associated with more overlapping, lower resolution, holistic processing. This concept refines the simple notion that a larger brain area is associated with dominance for a function and offers an alternative explanation associated with “processing type.” This account is mechanistic in the sense that it offers a mechanism whereby asymmetrical components of structure are related to specific functional biases yielding testable predictions, rather than the generalization that “bigger is better” for any given function. Face processing provides a test case – it is the opposite of language, being dominant in the right hemisphere. Consistent with the bias for holistic, configural processing of faces, the minicolumns in the right-hemisphere fusiform gyrus are thinner than in the left hemisphere, which is associated with featural processing. Again, this asymmetry is not found in chimpanzees. The difference between hemispheres may also be seen in terms of processing speed, facilitated by asymmetric myelination of white matter tracts ( Anderson et al., 1999 found that axons of the left posterior superior temporal lobe were more thickly myelinated). By cross-referencing the differences between the active fields of the two hemispheres, via tracts such as the corpus callosum, the relationship of local features to global features may be encoded. The emergent hierarchy of features within features is a recursive structure that may functionally contribute to generativity – the ability to perceive and express layers of structure and their relations to each other. The inference is that recursive generativity, an essential component of language, reflects an interaction between processing biases that may be traceable in the microstructure of the cerebral cortex. Minicolumn organization in the PT and the prefrontal cortex has been found to correlate with cognitive scores in humans. Altered minicolumn organization is also observed in neuropsychiatric disorders including autism and schizophrenia. Indeed, altered interhemispheric connections correlated with minicolumn asymmetry in schizophrenia may relate to language-processing anomalies that occur in the disorder. Schizophrenia is associated with over-interpretation of word meaning at the semantic level and over-interpretation of relevance at the level of pragmatic competence, whereas autism is associated with overly literal interpretation of word meaning and under-interpretation of social relevance at the pragmatic level. Both appear to emerge from a disruption of the ability to interpret layers of meaning and their relations to each other. This may be a consequence of disequilibrium in the processing of local and global features related to disorganization of minicolumnar units of processing. (shrink)

In providing the first comprehensive account of these pervasive and crucial systems, A History of Trust in Ancient Greece links Greek political, economic, social, and intellectual history in new ways and challenges contemporary analyses of ...

In this paper I begin with a recent challenge to the Semantic Approach and identify an underlying assumption, namely that identity conditions for theories should be provided. Drawing on previous work, I suggest that this demand should be resisted and that the Semantic Approach should be seen as a philosophical device that we may use to represent certain features of scientific practice. Focussing on the partial structures variant of that approach, I then consider a further challenge that arises from a (...) concern with the role of idealisations in that practice. I argue that the partial structures approach is capable of meeting this challenge and I conclude with some broader observations about the role of such formal accounts within the philosophy of science. (shrink)