[opening paragraph] -- Clark: The `astonishing hypothesis' which you put forward in your book, and which you obviously feel is very controversial, is that `You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are, in fact, no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: `You're nothing but a pack of neurons'.' But it seems to me that this is not so (...) astonishing a statement for a scientist to make. Isn't this what reductionist science has always believed? (shrink)

This is a study of Aristotle's moral philosophy as it is contained in the Nicomachean Ethics. Hardie examines the difficulties of the text; presents a map of inescapable philosophical questions; and brings out the ambiguities and critical disagreements on some central topics, inclduing happiness, the soul, the ethical mean, and the initiation of action.

The relationship between corporate executives and shareholders has riveted the attention of business ethicists since the inception of the field. Most ethicists agree that corporate executives owe their investors the duties of loyalty, candor, and care. These fiduciary duties undergird the promises made to shareholders at the time of incorporation, placing on executives moral obligations to engage in fair dealing and to avoid conflicts of interest.We concur that executives owe all of their existing shareholders both promise-keeping and fiduciary duties and (...) argue that some corporateexecutives violate these responsibilities by attempting to withhold information from or limit information to some shareholders while courting others. We analyze the ethical implications of six techniques and tools that executives use to attract certain types of shareholders while deterring others. We conclude with recommended structural and behavioral changes to these current managerial and investor practices. (shrink)

The relationship between corporate executives and shareholders has riveted the attention of business ethicists since the inception of the field. Most ethicists agree that corporate executives owe their investors the duties of loyalty, candor, and care. These fiduciary duties undergird the promises made to shareholders at the time of incorporation, placing on executives moral obligations to engage in fair dealing and to avoid conflicts of interest.We concur that executives owe all of their existing shareholders both promise-keeping and fiduciary duties and (...) argue that some corporateexecutives violate these responsibilities by attempting to withhold information from or limit information to some shareholders while courting others. We analyze the ethical implications of six techniques and tools that executives use to attract certain types of shareholders while deterring others. We conclude with recommended structural and behavioral changes to these current managerial and investor practices. (shrink)

Probably the most useful survey of modern aesthetics published in recent years.

This paper explores the effect of structurally enacted governance, such as board membership rules, versus process enacted governance, such as disclosure practices, on investor trust. Certain organizational factors are proposed due to their ability to inform trust propensity and transparency enactment. Regulatory oversight, organizational structure and investor salience are considered in light of their effect on relational and transactional approaches to a company’s investors.

This paper provides a framework for beginning the discussion of how and why corporate disclosure programs vary in their scope. It posits that managerial agency along with certain external forces, such as disclosure regulations, will affect the scope and managerial commitment to a broad or narrow disclosure program scope. Preliminary findings are presented in brief form.

The father of guerrilla warfare in Northern Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, Mina astounded his enemies and won the respect and love of his own people.

What is the will? And what is its relation to human action? Throughout history, philosophers have been fascinated by the idea of "the will": the source of the drive that motivates human beings to act. However, there has never been a clear consensus as to what the will is and how it relates to human action. Some philosophers have taken the will to be based firmly in reason and rational choice, and some have seen it as purely self-determined. Others have (...) replaced the idea of the human will with a more general drive uniting humans and the rest of nature, living and non-living. This collection of nine specially commissioned papers traces the formulation and treatment of the problem of the will from ancient philosophy through the scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages, to modern philosophy and right up to contemporary theories. Philosophers discussed include Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Hobbes, Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. (shrink)

The author narrates briefly the friendship that developed from his instruction of James Dean in the art of photography and documents the Dean personality with exclusive portraits.

What is the proper relation between the scientific worldview and other parts or aspects of human knowledge and experience? Can any science aim at "complete coverage" of the world, and if it does, will it undermine--in principle or by tendency--other attempts to describe or understand the world? Should morality, theology and other areas resist or be protected from scientific treatment? Questions of this sort have been of pressing philosophical concern since antiquity. The Proper Ambition of Science presents ten particular case (...) studies written by prominent philosophers, looking at how this problem has been approached from the ancient world right up to the present day. Contributors: Bob Sharples, M.W.F. Stone, G.A.J. Rogers, J.R. Milton, Aaron Ridley, Christopher Hookway, Dermot Moran, Thomas E. Uebel, David Papineau, and Nancy Cartwright. (shrink)

Written by five scholars whose expertise extends across the disciplines of biblical, historical, systematic, and philosophical theology, this is a careful and ...

Postmodern view of Australian multiculturalism. Discusses the ways in which identity and imagery merge and interact in a multicultural society, within a postmodern theoretical framework, and examines topics such as liberalism and multiculturalism, and cultural postmodernity. Includes chapter notes, a bibliography and an index. Clark is director of the Institute of Ethics and Public Policy at Monash University, Forbes is professor of geography at Flinders University of South Australia, and Francis is a postgraduate student at Monash University. The contributors (...) include sociologists, literary theorists, geographers and a philosopher. (shrink)

This article proposes an analytical approach to algorithms that stresses operations of folding. The aim of this approach is to broaden the common analytical focus on algorithms as biased and opaque black boxes, and to instead highlight the many relations that algorithms are interwoven with. Our proposed approach thus highlights how algorithms fold heterogeneous things: data, methods and objects with multiple ethical and political effects. We exemplify the utility of our approach by proposing three specific operations of folding—proximation, universalisation and (...) normalisation. The article develops these three operations through four empirical vignettes, drawn from different settings that deal with algorithms in relation to AIDS, Zika and stock markets. In proposing this analytical approach, we wish to highlight the many different attachments and relations that algorithms enfold. The approach thus aims to produce accounts that highlight how algorithms dynamically combine and reconfigure different social and material heterogeneities as well as the ethical, normative and political consequences of these reconfigurations. (shrink)

This article builds on the tradition of attitudinal measures of religiosity established by Leslie Francis and colleagues with the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity by introducing a new measure to assess the attitudinal disposition of Pagans. A battery of items was completed by 75 members of a Pagan Summer Camp. These items were reduced to produce a 21-item scale that measured aspects of Paganism concerned with: the God/Goddess, worshipping, prayer, and coven. The scale recorded an alpha coefficient (...) of 0.93. Construct validity of the Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism was demonstrated by the clear association with measures of participation in private rituals. (shrink)

Radically reorienting our understanding of the Enlightenment, this book explores the complex relations between "englightened" values and the making of scientific knowledge. Here monsters and automata, barometers and botanical gardens, polite academics and boisterous clubs, plans for violent wars and for universal peace, are all relocated in the landscape of enlightened Europe. The contributors show how changing forms of discipline, machinery, and instrumentation affected the emergence of new kinds of knowledge; consider how institutions of public rate taste and conversation helped (...) provide a common frame for the study of human and nonhuman natures; and explore the regional operations of scientific culture at the geographical fringes of Europe. Covering a wide range of scientific disciplines, both in the principal European countries and in areas peripheral to Europe, the book also includes ample illustrations and an extensive bibliography. Implicated in the rise of both fascism and liberal secularism, the moral and political values that shaped the Enlightenment remain controversial today. Through careful scrutiny of how these values influenced and were influenced by the concrete practices of its sciences, this book gives us an entirely new sense of the Enlightenment. -- from back cover. (shrink)

Through examples from scriptures and philosophy, Clark tries to understand God, and what that means to an individual. In the end, people find that only one thing can possibly make the case for God--faith.