The slogan that criminal liability requires an ‘act’, or a ‘voluntary act’, is still something of a commonplace in textbooks of criminal law. There are, it is usually added, certain exceptions to this requirement— cases in which liability is in fact, and perhaps even properly, imposed in the absence of such an act: but the ‘act requirement’ is taken to represent a normally minimal necessary condition of criminal liability. Even offences of strict liability, for which no mens (...) rea is required, require an act: thus to the familiar slogan that actus non facit reum nisi metis sit rea we can add the prior, more fundamental slogan that mens non facit reum nisi actus sit reus ; before we ask whether a defendant acted with mens rea or fault, we must ask whether he committed a criminal act at all. (shrink)

Doug Husak has argued, persuasively I think, that there is no literal ‘act requirement’ in Anglo-American law. I begin by reviewing Husak’s reasons for rejecting the act requirement, and provide additional reasons to think he is right to do so. But Husak’s alternative, the ‘control condition’, I argue, is inadequate. The control requirement is falsified by the widespread practice of holding extremely intoxicated offenders liable for criminal conduct they engage in even if they lack control over their (...) conduct at the time of the offense, and even if they are acting involuntarily. I provide examples from Canadian, US and German law to flesh out our legal practices with respect to intoxicated offenders. I then argue that, at least with respect to one class of intoxicated offenders–those known as ‘grand schemers’, who plan their criminal offending prior to rendering themselves incapable of voluntary control over their conduct–we are morally justified in imposing liability. I then propose an alternative to both the act and control requirements: what I call the ‘agency requirement’. I argue that our law does and should impose liability for conduct that is expressive of or constitutive of the defendant’s practically rational agency. Adopting an agency view allows us to expand our focus from just the moment of the offense to temporally extended instances of agency, such as is involved in planned offending by grand schemers. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To ascertain which conditions nurses believe should be in a law allowing active voluntary euthanasia (AVE). DESIGN: Survey questionnaire posted to registered nurses (RNs). SETTING: Australian Capital Territory (ACT) at the end of 1996, when active voluntary euthanasia was legal in the Northern Territory. SURVEY SAMPLE: A random sample of 2,000 RNs, representing 54 per cent of the RN population in the ACT. MAIN MEASURES: Two methods were used to look at nurses' opinions. The first involved four (...) vignettes which varied in terms of critical characteristics of each patient who was requesting help to die. The respondents were asked if the law should be changed to allow any of these requests. There was also a checklist of conditions, most of which have commonly been included in Australian proposed laws on AVE. The respondents chose those which they believed should apply in a law on AVE. RESULTS: The response rate was 61%. Support for a change in the law to allow AVE was 38% for a young man with AIDS, 39% for an elderly man with early stage Alzheimer's disease, 44% for a young woman who had become quadriplegic and 71% for a middle-aged woman with metastases from breast cancer. The conditions most strongly supported in any future AVE law were: "second doctor's opinion", "cooling off period", "unbearable protracted suffering", "patient fully informed about illness and treatment" and "terminally ill". There was only minority support for "not suffering from treatable depression", "administer the fatal dose themselves" and "over a certain age". CONCLUSION: Given the lack of support for some conditions included in proposed AVE laws, there needs to be further debate about the conditions required in any future AVE bills. (shrink)

This work provides, for the first time, a unified account of the theory of action presupposed by both British and American criminal law and its underlying morality. It defends the view that human actions are volitionally caused body movements. This theory illuminates three major problems in drafting and implementing criminal law--what the voluntary act requirement does and should require, what complex descriptions of actions prohibited by criminal codes both do and should require, and when the two actions are (...) the "same" for purposes of assessing whether multiple prosecutions and multiple punishments are warranted. The book contributes to the development of a coherent theory of action in philosophy. It provides a grounding in three of the most basic elements of criminal liability for legislators, judges, and the lawyers who argue to them. (shrink)

In print for the first time in over ten years, Act and Crime provides a unified account of the theory of action presupposed by both Anglo-American criminal law and the morality that underlies it. The book defends the view that human actions are always volitionally caused bodily movements and nothing else. The theory is used to illuminate three major problems in the drafting and the interpretation of criminal codes: 1) what the voluntary act requirement both does and should (...) require; 2) what complex descriptions of actions prohibited by criminal codes both do and should require ; and 3) when two actions are 'the same' for purposes of assessing whether multiple prosecutions and multiple punishments are warranted. The book both contributes to the development of a coherent theory of action in philosophy, and it provides both legislators and judges a grounding in three of the most basic elements of criminal liability. (shrink)

I argue that the two criteria traditionally identified as jointly sufficient for voluntary behavior according to Aristotle require qualification. Without such qualification, they admit troubling exceptions. Through minding these difficult examples, I conclude that a third condition mentioned by Aristotle – the eph' hēmin – is key to qualifying the original two criteria. What is eph' hēmin is that which is efficiently caused by appetite and teleologically caused by reason such that the agent could have, in theory, acted differently. (...) I propose that praise and blame are justified only when 1: the behavior is voluntary and 2: the agent is susceptible to the positive influences of appropriate praise and blame to help form, improve, or strengthen a good character. Through concentrating on the agent's affectability in morally salient situations, we may better understand the qualified criteria's role in voluntary human behavior in general. (shrink)

I argue that when determining whether an agent ought to perform an act, we should not hold fixed the fact that she’s going to form certain attitudes (and, here, I’m concerned with only reasons-responsive attitudes such as beliefs, desires, and intentions). For, as I argue, agents have, in the relevant sense, just as much control over which attitudes they form as which acts they perform. This is important because what effect an act will have on the world depends not only (...) on which acts the agent will simultaneously and subsequently perform, but also on which attitudes she will simultaneously and subsequently form. And this all leads me to adopt a new type of practical theory, which I call rational possibilism. On this theory, we first evaluate the entire set of things over which the agent exerts control, where this includes the formation of certain attitudes as well as the performance of certain acts. And, then, we evaluate individual acts as being permissible if and only if, and because, there is such a set that is itself permissible and that includes that act as a proper part. Importantly, this theory has two unusual features. First, it is not exclusively act-orientated, for it requires more from us than just the performance of certain voluntary acts. It requires, in addition, that we involuntarily form certain attitudes. Second, it is attitude-dependent in that it holds that which acts we’re required to perform depends on which attitudes we’re required to form. I then show how these two features can help us both to address certain puzzling cases of rational choice and to understand why most typical practical theories (utilitarianism, virtue ethics, rational egoism, Rossian deontology, etc.) are problematic. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that we have obligations not only to perform certain actions, but also to have certain attitudes (such as desires, beliefs, and intentions), and this despite the fact that we rarely, if ever, have direct voluntary control over our attitudes. Moreover, I argue that whatever obligations we have with respect to actions derive from our obligations with respect to attitudes. More specifically, I argue that an agent is obligated to perform an action if and only (...) if it’s the action that she would perform if she were to have the attitudes that she ought to have. This view, which I call attitudism, has three important implications. First, it implies that an adequate practical theory must not be exclusively act-orientated. That is, it must require more of us than just the performance of certain voluntary acts. Second, it implies that an adequate practical theory must be attitude-dependent. That is, it must hold that what we ought to do depends on what attitudes we ought to have. Third, it implies that no adequate practical theory can require us to perform acts that we would not perform even if we were to have the attitudes that we ought to have. I then show how these implications can help us both to address certain puzzling cases of rational choice and to understand why most typical practical theories (utilitarianism, rational egoism, virtue ethics, Rossian deontology, etc.) are mistaken. (shrink)

Complementing recent studies by Keown, Whitehill, and Hallisey that associate Buddhist ethics with the virtue tradition, the author proposes that Buddhist virtue requires both overcoming attachment to self and compassionate regard for others. Within a broader framework of comparative religious ethics, such a claim is not extraordinary; overcoming prudentialist self-interest, cultivating sympathy, and acting on others' behalf are ethical values highly praised by most religious traditions, including Buddhism. Nevertheless, this proposal runs counter to those who hold Theravāda Buddhism to be (...) dominated by the world-renouncing values of the monk antithetical to a social ethic. It also differs from the view that monastic and lay ethics, while not in opposition, are merely complementary. The author contends that the moral value of voluntary poverty, ordinarily labeled a monastic virtue, can be seen as the foundation for other-regarding virtues such as compassion and benevolence. (shrink)

Criminal law casebooks and treatises frequently mention the possibility that criminal liability for possession is inconsistent with the Voluntary Act Requirement, which limits criminal liability to that which includes an act or an omission. This paper explains why criminal liability for possession is compatible with the Voluntary Act Requirement despite the fact that possession is a status. To make good on this claim, the paper defends the Voluntary Act Requirement, offers an account of the (...) nature of omissions of the kind that need be included in that for which criminal liability is imposed in the absence of a voluntary act, and argues that possession is a status that is constituted in part by an omission of this sort. The result is that to hold people criminally liable for possession is to hold them criminally liable both for a status and for an omission, an omission that is part of what it is to have that status. The paper also distinguishes possession from vagrancy, which is not a proper object of criminal liability, precisely because of constraints placed by the Voluntary Act Requirement. And the paper argues that possession incident to dispossession is not a proper object of criminal liability because it does not involve an omission of the kind that other forms of possession involve. (shrink)

The United States Government does not mandate that US based firms follow US social and environmental law in foreign markets. However, because many developing countries do not have strong human rights, labor, and environmental laws, many multinationals have adopted voluntary corporate responsibility initiatives to self-regulate their overseas social and environmental practices. This article argues that voluntary actions, while important, are insufficient to address the magnitude of problems companies confront as they operate in developing countries where governance is often (...) inadequate. The United States can do more to ensure that its multinationals act responsibly everywhere they operate. First, policymakers should define the social and environmental responsibilities of global companies. They must consistently make their expectations for global business clear – and underscore that this objective can often be accomplished without mandates. Second, the US should closely examine the policies that undermine global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and address the many conflicting signals sent by policymakers. Third, the President should make the US government a CSR model by examining how to use its purchasing power to promote human rights. Finally, the US government should require pension funds to report on the social and environmental consequences of their investments. In these ways, Americans can mind our business – and thus make sure that US based firms do not undermine social and environmental progress when they operate in the developing world. (shrink)

Supererogation has gained attention as a means of explaining the voluntary behaviours of individuals and organizations that are done for the benefit of others and which go above what is required of legislation and what may be expected by society. Whilst the emerging literature has made some significant headway in exploring supererogation as an ethical lens for the study of business there remain several important issues that require attention. These comprise, the lack of primary evidence upon which such examinations (...) have been made, attention has been given to only singular pro-social acts of organizations, and the focus has been upon the actions of large organizations. Furthermore, Heyd’s (Supererogation, Cambridge University Press, 1982) original taxonomy of six supererogatory acts, comprising Moral Heroism, Beneficence, Volunteering, Favour, Forgiveness and Forbearance, has been considered to be complete and other forms of supererogatory acts have not yet been explored. In order to address these gaps this study poses the research questions: First, it studies how a single, contemporary SME performs multiple supererogatory acts in its attempts to address its social and environmental goals that go beyond CSR. Second, it seeks to gain a deeper theoretical understanding of Heyd’s (Supererogation, Cambridge University Press, 1982) taxonomy of six forms of supererogation through the capture of primary data. This research makes a three-year case study examination of a single SME that has been formally recognized for its work in addressing social and environmental issues at local, national and global levels. Primary data are acquired of the supererogatory acts that it performs through a three-year participant observation case study, utilizing 61 interviews and 3 focus groups with internal and external stakeholders. In doing so, it addresses the empirical limitations of the extant research, substantiates each of the forms that supererogatory acts may take, and makes a contribution to the theory of supererogation by identifying a further class of act that is ‘Sharing’. (shrink)

Moral theories that demand that we do what is morally best leave no room for the supererogatory. One argument against such theories is that they fail to realize the value of autonomy: supererogatory acts allow for the exercise of autonomy because their omissions are not accompanied by any threats of sanctions, unlike obligatory ones. While this argument fails, I use the distinction it draws – between omissions of obligatory and supererogatory acts in terms of appropriate sanctions – to draw a (...) parallel with psychological perfectionism. Through this parallel, I demonstrate that requiring what is morally best is in fact counter-productive. Thus, by its own lights, a theory that wants us to do what is best ought at the very least to tell us to believe that some actions are supererogatory. As the old adage goes, the best is the enemy of the good; I argue here that the supererogatory is the solution. (shrink)

In broad outline, the chapter proceeds as follows. As indicated above, the Voluntary Act Principle has two components. The first part, the act component, claims that criminal liability can be imposed on an accused only for the performance of an act. The second part, the voluntariness component, claims that criminal liability can be imposed on an accused only for the voluntary performance of an act. I will argue that both components of the Voluntary Act Principle are in (...) need of amendment. I will first indicate why I think the act component of the Voluntary Act Principle is in tension with the criminal law’s own conception of the necessary conditions for criminal liability, and suggest a relatively simple fix. I will then argue that what is really at work in the voluntariness component of the Voluntary Act Principle is not so much voluntariness but rather what some authors have called the practical agency condition. In making my argument I will appeal to Harry Frankfurt’s hierarchical account of the will in the hopes of illuminating what it means for an action to belong to an agent, and thus, what it means for an agent to be responsible for something she has done. (shrink)

This essay, as will become obvious, owes a huge debt to Mark Kelman, particularly to his article “Interpretative Construction in the Substantive Criminal Law.” That debt is one of both concept and content. There is rich irony in my aping Kelman's deconstructionist enterprise, for I do not share his enthusiasm for either the “insights” or the political agenda of the Critical Legal Studies movement. I do not believe that either the law in general or the criminal law in particular is (...) radically indeterminate, rife with internal contradictions, or an expression of the interests of a dominant economic class. And although, like Kelman, I believe that the freedom/determinism, act/character, and rule/principle dichotomies must ultimately be dealt with in order to have a completely satisfactory account of criminal law, I also believe that these dichotomies loom just as large in other areas of law and in normative theory generally. They are problems for Crits as well as for liberal-legalists. In any event, my intentions in undertaking this deconstructionist enterprise are modestly reformist, not revolutionary. I do not intend to shift any paradigms, but to work with well-established ones. I will assume that criminal law seeks to accomplish some blend of retributive response to and deterrence of culpable choices, choices to defy moral norms that are also legal norms. I will also assume that a culpable choice is one that reflects negatively on the values held by the chooser. Beyond these quite modest assumptions, I need not and will not venture in this paper, realizing, of course, that much has and can be written about the proper aims of punishment and the proper account of culpability. (shrink)

The Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights enforces Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. OCR works through complaint investigations and compliance reviews, as well as outreach, technical assistance, and public education to promote voluntary compliance. In the Olmstead decision of June 1999, the Supreme Court held that the ADA’s “integration regulation” requires state and local government to administer services, programs, and activities in the most integrated (...) setting appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities. The decision changed the focus from whether a right to more integrated services exists, to under what circumstances and how services will be provided. The New Freedom Initiative announced by President Bush in February 2001 is a broadbased initiative to remove barriers to community living for people with disabilities and promote swift implementation of the Olmstead decision. (shrink)

Aquinas argues that an agent’s act may be voluntary, involuntary, or even nonvoluntary. An agent performs a non-voluntary act on these conditions: (a) the agent does not know the act falls under a certain description D, (b) the act under D is not contrary to the agent’s will, and (c) if the agent had known that the act fell under D, the agent would still have performed it. Aquinas’s full account of non-voluntary acts is terse and ambiguous (...) and seems to contradict his fuller, more articulate, and philosophically rich views on voluntary and involuntary acts. The appearance of inconsistency, however, is illusory. Once understood, his account of non-voluntary acts clarifies various aspects of his theory of responsibility that are hard to glean from other discussions and reveals just how strongly Aquinas is inclined to Augustinian internalism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Actions and the Criminal Law Objects or Conditions of Criminal Responsibility? Actions and (Voluntary) Acts Abandoning the Act Requirement? An Action Presumption? References.

This short review examines the work of four Canadian scholars addressing a variety of questions about criminal responsibility. The essays under review are a small part of a recent collection of essays entitled “Rethinking Criminal Law Theory: New Canadian Perspectives in the Philosophy of Domestic, Transnational, and International Criminal Law.”.

According to behavioural theories deriving from pragmatism, gestalt psychology, existentialism, and ecopsychology, knowledge about the world is gained by intentional action followed by learning. In terms of the neurodynamics described here, if the intending of an act comes to awareness through reafference, it is perceived as a cause. If the consequences of an act come to awareness through proprioception and exteroception, they are perceived as an effect. A sequence of such states of awareness comprises consciousness, which can grow in complexity (...) to include self-awareness. Intentional acts do not require awareness, whereas voluntary acts require self-awareness. Awareness of the action/perception cycle provides the cognitive metaphor of linear causality as an agency. Humans apply this metaphor to objects and events in the world to predict and control them, and to assign social responsibility. Thus, linear causality is the bedrock of technology and social contracts. Complex material systems with distributed non-linear feedback, such as brains and their neural and behavioural activities, cannot be explained by linear causality. They can be said to operate by circular causality without agency. The nature of self-control is described by breaking the circle into a forward limb, the intentional self, and a feedback limb, awareness of the self and its actions. The two limbs are realized through hierarchically stratified kinds of neural activity. Intentional acts are produced by the self-organized microscopic neural activity of cortical and subcortical components in the brain. Awareness supervenes as a macroscopic ordering state, that defers action until the self-organizing microscopic process has reached closure in reflective prediction. Agency, which is removed from the causal hierarchy by the appeal to circularity, re-appears as a metaphor by which events in the world are anthropomorphized, making them appear subject to human control. (shrink)

Written by a noted expert in criminal law, this book explores the philosophical underpinnings of the law's major doctrines concerning actus reus, mens rea, and defences, showing that they are not always driven by culpability. They are grounded also in principles of moral responsibility, ascriptive responsibility, and wrongdoing. As such, they engage wider debates about wrongdoing, and about the boundaries between liability and freedom. This multi-textured analysis allows this book to take more nuanced positions about many important controversies in criminal (...) law. It argues, for example, that liability for omissions and for negligence-and even some strict liability elements-can sometimes be legitimate yet, at the same time, should be relatively rare. It also explains why principles of causation can differ in the criminal law from other contexts; what is wrong with the 'voluntary act' requirement; and why luck can affect the wrongs we commit without changing our degree of blameworthiness for committing them. The book concludes with an account of the major types of defences, and of how they interact with an agent's wrong and her underlying motivations.This volume presents a coherent and rich vision of the criminal law that, by its sheer breadth, makes a distinctive contribution to the literature, of interest to lawyers and philosophers alike. (shrink)

In his essay, Philosophical Reflections on Experimenting with Human Subjects, Hans Jonas contends that except in cases of widespread medical emergencies, people do not have a moral or social obligation to volunteer to be subjects in medical experiments. He further argues that any appeal for volunteer subjects in medical experiments should whenever possible give priority to those who can identify with the project and offer a strong sense of commitment to its goals. The first of these claims is given support (...) against some recent criticisms, but argument is offered to show that the second claim not only does little to enhance the stature of the standard requirement of free and informed consent but may even weaken the moral validity of the consent. (shrink)

Language’s intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from other communication systems. Specifically, language is often thought to depend on highly structured intentional action and mutual mindreading by a communicator and recipient. Whilst similar abilities in animals can shed light on the evolution of intentionality, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit animal intentional communication and suggest that progress in identifying analogous capacities has been complicated by (i) the assumption that intentional (that is, voluntary) (...) production of communicative acts requires mental-state attribution, and (ii) variation in approaches investigating communication across sensory modalities. To move forward, we argue that a framework fusing research across modalities and species is required. We structure intentional communication into a series of requirements, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for purposive, intentionally communicative acts to be demonstrated. Our unified approach helps elucidate the distribution of animal intentional communication and subsequently serves to clarify what is meant by attributions of intentional communication in animals and humans. (shrink)

The problem of human freedom have been addressed by al-Mutakallimūn (Islamic theologians) in the context of human acts and discussed from the point of view its relation with the will and other elements. At this point, whether the human has will and power in his own act, the limits of his will and power, the role of human in the act and his responsibilities have prompted to different debates. The theory of tawlīd put forward by Mu‘tazila is very crucial in (...) terms of determining the scope and limits of the freedom of human in acts. Mu‘tazila’s tawlīd theory defenses based on two important reasons. The first is to present the nature and limits of the acts that man did them outside himself. The other is to explain the relationship of human with such acts with regards to moral responsibility. Because both issues are very important in the principle of justice of Mu‘tazila. The effort to put the cause-effect relationship of human with his acts in terms of tawhīd and justice on the rational and moral ground is the reason for emergence of the theory. In this respect, the purpose of this theory which enables establishing a causality relationship between the human act and nature is aimed at the justification of freedom and responsibility between agent (fā‘il) and act.In this study, firstly, the definition of the concept of tawlīd and its meaning area have been presented and tackled the discussions about the agent of indirect acts. And then it has been discoursed upon the criticisms of Ahl al-Sunna about the subject of tawlīd. The subject has been outlined in the context of the intellectual discussion between Ahl al-Sunna and Mu‘tazila which constitute the dominant part of theological dispute tradition. In this respect, the main purpose of the study is to reveal how the limits of indirect actions belonging to human by force of freedom and moral responsibility are drawn and understood.Although they did not have a uniform thought about the topic, Mu‘tazila theologians who accepted semi-determinism in the theory of tawlīd acknowledged the existence of natures in the substances. Those who admitted the reason as a means of the act did not approve this. By accepting the continuity of the accidents in the acts, they twisted together the voluntary acts and the natural acts, and accepted that directly acts were realized through the human will and the other according to the principle of necessity. According to Mu‘tazila, causes are only means. Hence, the act emerging as a result of the means is the act of the agent who used this means to reach the result, not the means. Therefore, man is the agent of engendered acts and responsible for all kinds of acts that arise as a reflection of the will and their consequences. While Ahl al-Sunna has directly associated the action of man and all its consequences with the power of Allah, Mu‘tazila has based these actions on the power of man, which Allah has created in man and has been the source of the acts. Contrary to Mu‘tazila, the continuance of power which are not a constant accident is not possible for a second act from the point of Ahl al-Sunna since they have accepted the idea that the accidents will not be continuous. In this respect, according to Ahl al-Sunna, there is no compulsory relationship between the agent that caused the formation of the acts and the result supervening from them. They did not accept the idea of tawlīd, which its meaning is that accident gives birth to accident, because it would oblige the relationship between cause and effect. Because this relationship, which Mu‘tazila gives the name of tawlīd in human acts, is made up for that Allah has created His laws right after the orientation of human to the cause. In this respect, Ahl al-Sunna thinkers rejected tawlīd because it would mean attributing an act to an inanimate being and require a mandatory relationship between cause and effect in the functioning of the universe. Although the result does not occur with his own act when the person applies to the cause, he is responsible for his act because it is related to the person who did it. Māturīdī tradition did not accept the acts that emerged as a result of tawlīd as the production of man, but they tried to establish a balance by holding the person responsible because he is the reason for the outcome that emerged. As for the Ash‘arites, they avoided giving a real effect of the will and power to the causes by considering that created will and power is only a locus in the emergence of the act. The person has no effect on his act except for directing his will to that act and his behavior which will make the person responsible is based on this will. (shrink)

Although the literature on corporate social responsibility has discussed the scope and meaning of CSR extensively, confusion still exists regarding how to define the concept. One controversial issue deals with the changing legal status of CSR. Based on a review of CSR definitions and meta-studies on CSR definitions, we find that the majority of definitions leans toward voluntary CSR. However, some recent regulatory amendments toward mandatory CSR have called into question the established idea of CSR as merely a managerial (...) tool of self-regulation. In this paper, we juxtapose the evolution of CSR in India against the scholarly literature discussing voluntary-versus-mandatory CSR to understand the recent shift toward a new conceptualization of CSR as a form of co-regulation that includes elements of both voluntary and mandatory regulation. The Indian Companies Act 2013 is a remarkable example in that it replaced an older version from 1956, taking a bold step toward the integration of voluntary and mandatory aspects in the application of CSR. We present practical implications of the Indian case for businesses and discuss implications for CSR theory development; we particularly consider the evolution of the business and society relationship from a voluntary soft law approach to CSR to an increasingly hard law approach and transitory hybrid forms in-between like soft–hard law and hard–soft law. (shrink)

In today’s multi-cultural world and global economy, attention is often focused on the diversity of cultural values and practices and the need for management approaches to take these differing cultural environments into account. While there is much to be valued in this approach, the focus is often on how to navigate through distinct cultural practices in order to achieve a singular business aim, which falls within the current neoliberal paradigm of global trade. In addition, by focusing on differences in cultural (...) practices, rather than on similarities in underlying values, this approach fails to utilize an important way to achieve a greater degree of global integration in management. Despite striking cultural differences, it is possible to identify some enduring values that underlie what often appear to be quite discrete value paradigms, especially by looking at value paradigms that have endured for centuries, even millennia. This paper proposes to explore the values embedded in two such value paradigms or religious traditions, zen buddhism and Judaism, describing crucial core values in each and comparing and contrasting their ethical frameworks, in order to be able to evaluate their utility in today’s world and especially their significance for creating a more holistic, inclusive, and responsible management framework. The paper will begin by explicating the set of foundational values in each religious tradition. For example, zen buddhism, especially as expressed by Vietnamese monk Thich Nhan Hanh, utilizes the concepts of engaged mindfulness and inter-being to demonstrate the ways in which all global issues are linked together, and the collective responsibility that all humans bear for the state of our planet and the beings who live on it. This approach is inherently holistic and inclusive, and requires a management approach that takes into account the moral responsibility that we all carry. Likewise, the Jewish tradition, while using quite different terminology, also lays out a holistic and inclusive moral vision. Key concepts include the values of Tikkum Olam, to repair the world, and Tsedakah, which literally means justice or righteousness, but is commonly used to indicate charitable giving. The first value, to repair the world, emphasizes the collective moral responsibility to heal whatever damage has been done to the world in order to make the it a better place for all. It does not matter who has done the damage; what matters is each person’s obligation to improve the status quo, under the assumption that all our fates are linked together. The second value, justice and charity, is also considered to be a moral obligation, not simply a voluntary act of charity. The emphasis here is on anonymous giving, done in order to help others and without any expectation of receiving some benefit, such as positive publicity. As a moral obligation, it is not something that one should benefit from. Thus, the concept of tsekakah also emphasizes the inter-connectedness of all humanity. In addition, in the Torah, there are a series of rules about how to deal with others in business as well as the obligation, during harvest-time, to leave some grain in the fields for the less fortunate. In all, we see a focus on being mindful of others, on seeing our fates as interconnected, as in zen buddhism. The last section of the paper will explore some of the ways in which these moral imperatives can be utilized to undergird and buttress a more holistic, inclusive and responsible management approach. Some management models already include moral imperatives, such as corporal social responsibility, and this section will explore in greater detail how the above concepts have been more fully integrated into current management models. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical reconsideration of the traditional doctrine that responsibility for a crime requires a voluntary act. I defend three general propositions: first, that orthodox Anglo-American criminal theory fails to explain adequately why criminal responsibility requires an act. Second, when it comes to the just definition of crimes, the act requirement is at best a rough generalization rather than a substantive limiting principle. Third, that the intuition underlying the so-called “act requirement” is better explained by (...) what I call the “practical-agency condition,” according to which punishment in a specific instance is unjust unless the crime charged was caused or constituted by the agent's conduct qua practically rational agent. The practical-agency condition is defended as a reconstruction of what is worth retaining in Anglo-American criminal law's traditional notion of an “act requirement.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Free Will in the Light of Neuropsychiatry”Benjamin Libet (bio)Is Free Will Incompatible with Neuroscience?Sean Spence sets forth some interesting approaches to the issue of free will. His concepts are provocative and his marshalling of related quotations is informative.However, I shall argue with some of his crucial assumptions, in a way that affects the validity of some of Spence’s major conclusions. The latter are that “conscious experience is (...) always temporally postneural activity and thus... ‘caused’ not causal. Our ‘control’ is a sense which may be lost.... Our sense of agency is apparently illusory.”I have, of course, no quarrel with the view that even a fully voluntary act is initiated unconsciously (non-consciously). That condition was in fact demonstrated experimentally by us (Libet et al. 1983) when we found that cerebral neural activity (“readiness potential”) precedes the subject’s awareness of his/her intention or wish to act by at least 350 msec. This applied to fully self-initiated acts that occurred without “pre-planning” by the subject of when to move. (Incidentally, those finding have been replicated by others—see Keller and Heckhansen, 1990 with commentary thereon by Libet 1992, and Wong et al. 1988).However, we also found that conscious intention did precede that actual motor act by about 200 msec. That left open the potentiality for the conscious function to control the outcome of the process that was initiated in the brain unconsciously (see Libet 1985). We have all had the experience of consciously suppressing or vetoing the performance of an urge or intention to act. The 200 msec interval provides sufficient time in which the voluntary process could be stopped, before final activation of the motor area about 50 msec before the act. We were able to show that subjects could veto an act in the 100–200 msec interval before the expected time for the action.Spence dismisses this free will potentiality in the control or veto of a voluntary process. He says: “It is flawed because the ‘decision’ (in consciousness) to act or not to act is itself the ‘result’ of preceding neural activity.” This argument is based on my own evidence that a period of up to 500 msec of cerebral activity is required to produce a conscious sensory experience (Libet 1993, for review).But conscious control of a process is not the same as becoming aware of the volitional intent (Libet 1985, 563–564). Control implies the imposing of a change, in this case after the appearance of the awareness of intention to act. Conscious control may not necessarily require the same neural “time-on” feature that precedes the appearance of awareness per se. There is presently [End Page 95] no directly applicable evidence against the appearance of a conscious control function without prior neural processes specific to its initiation.In short, one cannot cavalierly dismiss the possibility of a conscious free will function on the basis of a belief that such a control function must be itself initiated unconsciously by prior specific neural processes. The argument that conscious free will control is simply a useful delusion must still be regarded as a philosophical belief, not a scientifically demonstrated proposition.Spence goes on to suggest that “Consciousness is necessary for purposeful (intentional) action but it is not the initiator.” But if Spence is consistent in his view that all conscious functions are preceded by specific neural activities that initiate the function, then his putative role for consciousness would have been itself initiated unconsciously. How, then, would consciousness be “performing (purposeful, intentional) actions with subtlety and invention” if it is simply an after-effect of the responsible cerebral process? It would appear that Spence is postulating an active role for consciousness in directing the course of neural activities carrying out purposeful, intentional actions. That is the kind of potentiality I was suggesting must be kept open, but one that Spence dismissed elsewhere as “flawed.”On a technical point: The Grey Walter experiment is cited as evidence for postulated effects of timing, in the “illusion” of self-initiation of an act. However, that experimental result was simply due to the fact that the motor cortex initiates the command... (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 30, Issue 2, pp 202 - 221 There is ongoing scholarly debate over the role that Hobbes’s laws of nature play in grounding the moral requirement that subjects obey the government under which they live. This essay demonstrates how the laws of nature, when understood as natural duties, may directly ground a moral duty to obey one’s sovereign without positing that subjects have undertaken any covenant of subjection. Such a grounding avoids the problems that attend accounts (...) that depend on tacit covenant and coerced covenant. The essay describes the advantages of a natural duty account of the laws of nature over accounts that regard those laws as contractual obligations entered through voluntary acts, or as legal obligations to treat the natural laws as literal laws legislated by a sovereign God. (shrink)

Freedom in L. Polo’s transcendental anthropology is seen as equivalent to the human person, conceived as a peculiar act of existence different from the act of being attributed to the material universe. More precisely, freedom constitutes, together with co-existence, intellect and self-donating love, the four personal transcendentals of the being-person. The structure of self-donating love is the dynamics of giving and accepting. At the level of essence as a manifestation of the person, freedom appears as the self which is capable (...) of voluntary acts. Voluntary actions perform, through many good works, what is originally required by self-donating love. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to the CommentariesSean A. SpenceIn “Free Will in the Light of Neuropsychiatry,” I have attempted to present an argument from the perspective of materialist neuroscience, pushing the latter to its logical conclusion: that if the human nervous system is consistent in its properties, then the only place for “free will” is in the non-conscious processes which underpin conscious awareness. This argument I have based on two supports: the (...) “spatial” and the “temporal” (Spence, 1995).I have contended that the sense of freedom may be lost from certain actions, thereby implying that “freedom” is a sensory process distinct from action. This might be conceptualized as having a distinct functional distribution within the nervous system (a spatial distinction). I have also argued that conscious awareness of events occurs at a finite delay, the period of “neuronal adequacy,” after those events themselves. The point here is that neurochemical events giving rise to phenomenology are likely to require a period of time (no matter how short) for their genesis. The process is “on line” before we perceive it (a temporal distinction). Thus the “freedom to act,” a motor process, is necessarily non-conscious at the point of initiation.I am grateful to Frith, Libet and Stephens for their comments. In the most part our disagreements are likely to be those of emphasis, perhaps compounded by my uses of the term “free will.”I have no major disagreement with Frith’s comments. I would, however, emphasize that it is likely that the Bereitschaftspotential, or readiness potential, does tell us something regarding intended actions. It is, for example, absent prior to the involuntary movements seen in Tourette’s syndrome (Obeso et al. 1982), and reduced in akinetic patients with Parkinson’s disease (Dick et al. 1989) or medial frontal lobe lesions (Deecke et al. 1987). The latter groups have difficulty initiating intended, internally generated, actions.With regard to the suspicion of dualism in my diagrams, the point is well taken, but I am attempting to describe a functional distinction, the precise coordinates of which remain obscure. It may well be that “consciousness” occupies no fixed location but is an activity temporarily co-extant with that association cortex (or cortices) subserving the sensory modality (or modalities) experienced phenomenologically (see Bottini et al. 1995).I have based much of my “temporal” argument on Libet’s work, and I am grateful for his response. Nevertheless, I am still of the opinion that there is a central inconsistency with his argument that conscious control exerts a veto on acts which is somehow free of material constraints. [Indeed he states that he has “no quarrel with the view that even a fully voluntary act is initiated unconsciously (non-consciously)”.] Whereas I can [End Page 99] not prove that this power of veto does not evade neurochemical processes, or that it somehow acts instantaneously and independently, with no origin in unconscious processing, I can say that I have restricted myself to arguing within a materialist perspective, with the aim of “pushing it” to its extreme. The free will which Libet retains in consciousness is one which is unique, and unconstrained by materialism. It is dualism in disguise!Stephens implies that there is a non-argument regarding consciousness acting as an initiator of events. The suggestion is that no one would argue this. Yet this is Libet’s argument. It cannot be disproved, but it is clearly (internally) inconsistent with Libet’s own impressive body of work.As for the role of consciousness in action, I have, I think, invoked a position similar to that adopted by Stephens; that consciousness is more a sensory state, allowing awareness of actions, and their consequences, and perhaps thereby facilitating the function of non-conscious initiators. It is clearly necessary for the performance of the “higher” acts which we equate with human nature, but it is not sufficient. (Indeed many of the most creative insights have “emerged” into consciousness [see Boden, 1992].) The man with a paralyzed arm may wish for his arm to move but to no avail. Over time function may slowly reappear. But if his lesion is such that he is unaware of his impairment (anosognosia), then his prognosis may... (shrink)

The Data Protection Act 1998 presents a number of significant challenges to data controllers in the health sector. To assist data controllers in understanding their obligations under the act, the Information Commissioner has published guidance, The Use and Disclosure of Health Data, which is reproduced here. The guidance deals, among other things, with the steps that must be taken to obtain patient data fairly, the implied requirements of the act to use anonymised or psuedonymised data where possible, an exemption applicable (...) principally to records based research, the right of patients to object to the processing of their data, and the interface of the act and the common law duty of confidence. (shrink)

In this paper, the issue of plant closings is analyzed from the perspective of halakhah (the Written Law of Judaism). Two levels of analysis in halakhah must be differentiated: the legal (enforced by courts) and the moral (not enforced by law, but rather framed in terms of duty to God). There is no legal mandate to keep an unprofitable plant open, but there are a number of moral imprecations (particularly "acting more generously than the law requires") that might influence an (...) employer''s decision making. Using analogical reasoning to infer moral and/or legal obligations may be a fruitful means for businesspeople to analyze business situations in terms of ethical implications. (shrink)

In this paper, the issue of plant closings is analyzed from the perspective of halakhah (the Written Law of Judaism). Two levels of analysis in halakhah must be differentiated: the legal (enforced by courts) and the moral (not enforced by law, but rather framed in terms of duty to God). There is no legal mandate to keep an unprofitable plant open, but there are a number of moral imprecations (particularly "acting more generously than the law requires") that might influence an (...) employer's decision making. Using analogical reasoning to infer moral and/or legal obligations may be a fruitful means for businesspeople to analyze business situations in terms of ethical implications. (shrink)

I argue that a attractive theory about the metaphysics of belief—the prag- matic, interpretationist theory endorsed by Stalnaker, Lewis, and Dennett, among others—implies that agents have a novel form of voluntary control over their beliefs. According to the pragmatic picture, what it is to have a given belief is in part for that belief to be part of an optimal rationalization of your actions. Since you have voluntary control over your actions, and what actions you perform in part (...) determines what beliefs you count as having, this theory entails that you have some voluntary control over your beliefs. However, the pragmatic picture doesn’t entail that you can believe something as a result of intention to believe it. Nevertheless, I argue that the limited sort of voluntary control implied by the pragmatic picture may be of use in vindicating the deontological conception of epistemic justification. (shrink)

Based on his experimental studies, Libet claims that voluntary actions are initiated by unconscious brain activities well before intentions or decisions to act are consciously experienced by people. This account conflicts with our common-sense conception of human agency, in which people consciously and intentionally exert volitions or acts of will to initiate voluntary actions. This paper offers an alternative interpretation of Libet's experiment. The cause of the intentional acts performed by the subjects in Libet's experiment should not be (...) exclusively attributed to special cerebral processes; conscious intentions formed at the beginning of the experiment, when the subjects received experimental instructions, must be taken into account. In addition, what the subjects were required to report was not a conscious intention or decision to act that conventionally figures in the etiology of voluntary action, but rather a perceived effective urge to move induced by specific experimental instructions. According to the alternative interpretation, the most suitable mental term correlated with the specific brain activity that precedes conscious, self-initiated voluntary bodily movements is volition. This account is supported by recent theories of function of the supplementary motor area . Therefore, the notion that we are the authors or originators of our own actions, which is fundamental to our common understanding of free will, moral responsibility and human dignity, can be preserved. (shrink)

Criminal offenders may be offered to participate in voluntary rehabilitation programs aiming at correcting undesirable behaviour, as a condition of early release. Behavioural treatment may include direct intervention into the central nervous system (CNS). This article discusses under which circumstances voluntary rehabilitation by CNS intervention is justified. It is argued that although the context of voluntary rehabilitation is a coercive circumstance, consent may still be effective, in the sense that it can meet formal criteria for informed consent. (...) Further, for a consent to be normatively valid (“take the wronging out of the act”) under a coercive circumstance, the subject to be treated must (1) have the sovereign authority to consent, and (2) the offer-giver must be in the right normative position to make the offer. While I argue that subjects do have the sovereign authority to consent to treatment, I also argue that inappropriate offers yield invalid consents. Considerations on inappropriate offers should therefore inform which kinds of CNS intervention-based rehabilitation schemes the state may propose as part of the criminal justice system. Yet as I conclude in this paper, while there are some intrinsic constraints on voluntary rehabilitation programs, the main constraints on voluntary rehabilitation are likely to be contingent overriders. However, CNS intervention is not ruled out as such in the context of voluntary rehabilitation. (shrink)