"Golf day 2005 @ federal golf club, red hill." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (196), pp. 7.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the accountability for reasonableness and its four conditions. This explains the priority setting and resource allocation for scarce resources. In this article it is discussed that how the scarce resources in a developing country like Pakistan be allocated in health care. This is explained with the help of case scenario.

This book deals with the limitations of economic and financial accounting as an appropriate instrument to reflect the real value created or destroyed by an organization.The authors present asustainable social accounting approach that considers both the social and economic value - Blended Value - generated by an organization for all of its stakeholders. This approach is based on four major theories - Stakeholder Theory, Action Research, Phenomenological Perspective and Fuzzy Logic - and was developed on the basis of (...) a cost-benefit analysis. (shrink)

An essential requirement for increasing human confidence in computer systems is knowing an event’s origin. Therefore, it is necessary to have an efficient method to record such information. It is especially challenging in robotics, where unexpected behaviours can have unpredictable consequences, endangering the interests of people or even their safety. Furthermore, to analyse an incident’s cause or anticipate future behaviours, we must identify the events that cause a specific action. Although it is common to use logging systems for such purposes, (...) issues such as partial recording of events, unhelpful data or the impact on robot performance suggest conceiving new accountability solutions that assist when determining the responsible entities or the provenance of specific information. This paper presents a general-purpose approach to developing an accountability system for autonomous robots. It consists of four main components: a system event logger, a message producer, a distributed event streaming platform and a database. Our proposal is completely decoupled from the monitored system and allows real-time analysis, improving flexibility, besides system protection and transparency. Finally, the need to reduce the impact of the audit process and logging tasks on robot performance has promoted the development of different assessment scenarios to determine the best strategy for providing accounting services. (shrink)

Accounting for the Commandments in Medieval Judaism explores the discursive formation of the commandments as a generative matrix of Jewish thought and life in the posttalmudic period. Each study sheds light on how medieval Jews crafted the commandments out of theretofore underdetermined material. By systematizing, representing, or interrogating the amorphous category of commandment, medieval Jewish authors across both the Islamic and Christian spheres of influence sought to explain, justify, and characterize Israel's legal system, divine revelation, the cosmos, and even (...) the divine order. This volume correlates bodies of knowledge-such as jurisprudence, philosophy, ethics, pietism, and kabbalah-that are normally treated in isolation into a single conversation about a shared constitutional concern. (shrink)

Blame is multifarious. It can be passionate or dispassionate. It can be expressed or kept private. We blame both the living and the dead. And we blame ourselves as well as others. What’s more, we blame ourselves, not only for our moral failings, but also for our non-moral failings: for our aesthetic bad taste, gustatory self-indulgence, or poor athletic performance. And we blame ourselves both for things over which we exerted agential control (e.g., our voluntary acts) and for things over (...) which we lacked such control (e.g., our desires, beliefs, and intentions). I argue that, despite this manifest diversity in our blaming practices, it’s possible to provide comprehensive account of blame. Indeed, I propose a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that aims to specify blame’s extension in terms of its constitution as opposed to its function. And I argue that this proposal has a number of advantages beyond accounting for blame in all its disparate forms. For one, it can account for the fact that one’s having had control over whether one was to φ is a necessary condition for one’s being fittingly blamed for having φ-ed. For another, it can account for why, unlike fitting shame, fitting blame is always deserved, which in turn explains why there is something morally problematic about ridding oneself of one’s fitting self-blame (e.g., one’s fitting guilt). (shrink)

We characterize a type of functional explanation that addresses why a homologous trait originating deep in the evolutionary history of a group remains widespread and largely unchanged across the group’s lineages. We argue that biologists regularly provide this type of explanation when they attribute conserved functions to phenotypic and genetic traits. The concept of conserved function applies broadly to many biological domains, and we illustrate its importance using examples of molecular sequence alignments at the intersection of evolution and cell biology. (...) We use these examples to show how the study of conserved functions can integrate knowledge of a trait’s causal effects on fitness and its history of natural selection without invoking adaptation. We also show how conserved function provides a novel basis for addressing objections against evolutionary functions raised by Robert Cummins. (shrink)

As privacy concerns among consumers rise, service providers increasingly want to provide services that support privacy enhancing technologies. At the same time, online service providers must be able to protect themselves against misbehaving users. For instance, users that do not pay their bill must be held accountable for their behavior. This tension between privacy and accountability is fundamental, however a tradeoff is not always required. In this article we propose the concept of a time capsule, that is, a verifiable encryption (...) with timed and revocable decryptability. The time capsule together with its related protocols offer support of privacy while retaining strong accountability. In our scheme an honest user may enjoy full anonymity, but dishonest users who do not pay their bill have their identity revealed. In contrast to existing revocable anonymity systems, our proposed scheme requires less trust in an external authority, while simultaneously making accountability easier (and less costly) to achieve. (shrink)

Assertion is the central vehicle for the sharing of knowledge. Whether knowledge is shared successfully often depends on the quality of assertions: good assertions lead to successful knowledge sharing, while bad ones don't. In Sharing Knowledge, Christoph Kelp and Mona Simion investigate the relation between knowledge sharing and assertion, and develop an account of what it is to assert well. More specifically, they argue that the function of assertion is to share knowledge with others. It is this function that supports (...) a central norm of assertion according to which a good assertion is one that has the disposition to generate knowledge in others. The book uses this functionalist approach to motivate further norms of assertion on both the speaker and the hearer side and investigates ramifications of this view for other questions about assertion. (shrink)

In Complicity and Moral Accountability, Gregory Mellema presents a philosophical approach to the moral issues involved in complicity. Starting with a taxonomy of Thomas Aquinas, according to whom there are nine ways for one to become complicit in the wrongdoing of another, Mellema analyzes each kind of complicity and examines the moral status of someone complicit in each of these ways. Mellema's central argument is that one must perform a contributing action to qualify as an accomplice, and that it is (...) always morally blameworthy to perform such an action. Additionally, he argues that an accomplice frequently bears moral responsibility for the outcome of the other's wrongdoing, but he distinguishes this case from cases in which the accomplice is tainted by the wrongdoing of the principal actor. He further distinguishes between enabling, facilitating, and condoning harm, and introduces the concept of indirect complicity. Mellema tackles issues that are clearly important to any case of collective and shared responsibility, yet rarely discussed in depth, always presenting his arguments clearly, concisely, and engagingly. His account of the nonmoral as well as moral qualities of complicity in wrongdoing--especially of the many and varied ways in which principles and accomplices can interact--is highly illuminating. Liberally sprinkled with helpful and nuanced examples, Complicity and Moral Accountability vividly illustrates the many ways in which one may be complicit in wrongdoing. "In Complicity and Moral Accountability, Gregory Mellema has made an immensely important contribution to the discussion of group morality and collective responsibility both within and far beyond professional academic philosophy. His clearly written book will be essential reading." --Fergus Kerr, Honorary Fellow, University of Edinburgh. (shrink)

This is a draft of a chapter for the Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, edited by David Plunkett and Tristram McPherson. I offer an overview of hybrid views in metaethics, with main focus on hybrid cognitivist views such as those defended by Daniel Boisvert and David Copp, and on hybrid expressivist views such as those defended by Michael Ridge and myself.

This volume explores the opportunities and challenges facing the accounting profession in an increasingly globalized business and financial reporting environment. It looks back at past experiences of the profession in attempting to meet its public interest obligation. It examines the role and responsibilities of accounting to society including regulatory requirements, increased emphasis on corporate social responsibility, accounting fraud and whistle-blowing implications, internationalization of public interest obligations, and providing the education needed to be successful. The book incorporates an (...) ethical dimension in making these assessments. Its focus is a conceptual, theoretical one drawing on classical philosophy, the sociology of professions, economic theory, and the public interest dimension of accountants as professionals. The authors of papers are long-time contributors to the annual symposium on Research in Accounting Ethics sponsored by the Public Interest Section of the AAA.. (shrink)

It is a platitude that belief is subject to a standard of correctness: a belief is correct if and only if it is true. But not all standards of correctness are authoritative or binding. Some standards of correctness may be arbitrary, unjustified or outrightly wrong. Given this, one challenge to proponents of the truth norm of belief, is to answer what Korsgaard (1996) calls ‘the normative question’. Is the truth norm of belief authoritative or binding regarding what one ought to (...) or may believe? If so, what grounds its authority? The aim of this paper is to offer a novel answer to the grounding challenge on a reason-based normative framework. I develop and defend a practice-based account of the truth norm, according to which, the authority of the truth norm of belief is grounded in what I call the T-practice, a justified social practice that functions to facilitate knowledge production, maintenance, and social cooperation. (shrink)

Accountability is the bedrock upon which all lasting success is built. It is the necessary virtue for both individuals, and organizations, to realize their full potential. Accountability enables learning and growth, improves well-being, reduces stress, and drives results. But what if nearly everyone is wrong about the true nature of accountability? What if we have substituted something else it it's place, something that works to improve short-term results, but limits long term organizational health and success? What if the widespread management (...) approach of "holding others accountable" instead of creating accountability, encourages blame, limits results and growth, inhibits risk-taking, generates fear, fosters workplace conflict, and lowers over-all health and well-being? Authors Brian Moran and Mike Lenngington make the argument for what accountability truly is -- personal ownership of ones goals, actions, and progress. They show individuals how to take personal ownership, and thereby change their circumstances. They will also show leaders how to stop managing by consequences through "holding others accountable," and instead start leading to ownership by "holding others capable." In this way can individuals and organizations deliver on what they are truly capable of. (shrink)

Among the cognitive capacities of evolved creatures is the capacity to represent. Theories in cognitive neuroscience typically explain our manifest representational capacities by positing internal representations, but there is little agreement about how these representations function, especially with the relatively recent proliferation of connectionist, dynamical, embodied, and enactive approaches to cognition. In this talk I sketch an account of the nature and function of representation in cognitive neuroscience that couples a realist construal of representational vehicles with a pragmatic account of (...) mental content. I call the resulting package a deflationary account of mental representation and I argue that it avoids the problems that afflict competing accounts. (shrink)

It is tempting to think that all of normativity, such as our reasons for action, what we ought to do, and the attitudes that it is fitting for us to have, derives from what is valuable. But value-first approaches to normativity have fallen out of favour as the virtues of reasons- and fittingness-first approaches to normativity have become clear. On these views, value is not explanatorily prior to reasons and fit; rather the value of things is understood in terms of (...) the pro-attitudes it is fitting to have, or that we have reasons to have, towards these things. The value-first accounts of reasons and fit that have been proposed have been direct accounts of reasons and fit. On these views, the fittingness of an attitude is explained in terms of the value of having it or the value of the object of that attitude. This chapter details and surveys these problems, explaining which are yet to be overcome, and explaining which problems direct value-first accounts can overcome. This chapter then explores the prospects of an indirect value-first account of reasons and fit. It argues that it avoids the problems that direct value-first accounts face and may be as explanatorily powerful as fittingness- and reasons-first accounts of value and normativity more generally. (shrink)

We argue that P. F. Strawson's hugely influential account of moral responsibility in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (FR) is inextricably bound up with his barely known account of morality in ‘Social Morality and Individual Ideal’ (SMII). Reading FR through the lens of SMII has at least three far-reaching implications. First, the ethics–morality distinction in SMII gives content to Strawson's famous distinction between personal and moral reactive attitudes, which has often been thought to be a merely formal distinction. Second, the ethics–morality distinction (...) sheds light on the scope of moral responsibility in FR, which is narrower than commentators think. Third, Strawson's discussion of morality shows that he was not insensitive to issues of power, as several critics have claimed. The link between morality and power helps to make clear that Strawson allows for criticism of our moral responsibility practices. (shrink)

Recently T. M. Scanlon and others have advanced an ostensibly comprehensive theory of moral responsibility—a theory of both being responsible and being held responsible—that best accounts for our moral practices. I argue that both aspects of the Scanlonian theory fail this test. A truly comprehensive theory must incorporate and explain three distinct conceptions of responsibility—attributability, answerability, and accountability—and the Scanlonian view conflates the first two and ignores the importance of the third. To illustrate what a truly comprehensive theory might look (...) like, I investigate what it would say about the difficult case of the psychopath. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Aristotelian accounts of disease cannot provide us with an adequate descriptive account of our concept of disease. In other words, they fail to classify conditions as either diseases, or non-diseases, in a way that is consistent with commonplace intuitions. This being said, Aristotelian accounts of disease are not worthless. Aristotelian approaches cannot offer a decent descriptive account of our concept of disease, but they do offer resources for improving on the ways in which (...) we think about the harms that afflict human beings. While they cannot offer an account of ‘disease' they can offer an account of ‘harm'—and this it turns out, is ultimately of greater importance. (shrink)

Liberalism sanctifies the values chosen by the sovereign individual. This tends to rule out criticisms of an individual's “preference” for one value over another by, ironically, establishing a deterministic view of the self that protects the self's desires from scrutiny. Similarly, rational choice approaches to social theory begin with previously determined individual preferences and focus on the means by which they are pursued, concentrating on the results rather than the sources of people's values.A striking new attempt to go behind the (...) liberal and rational‐choice starting point in order to understand political preferences is found in Aaron Wildavsky's Cultural Theory. Yet Cultural Theory does not facilitate the criticism of preferences, because its understanding of them is fundamentally liberal. Even while rejecting methodological individualism, Cultural Theory's monocausally social theory of preference formation retains in a new guise the liberal preservation of preferences from criticism by reestablishing a deterministic view of the formation of values, leading it to share with liberalism an a historical view of their origins. (shrink)

Accountability is a cornerstone of the governance of artificial intelligence (AI). However, it is often defined too imprecisely because its multifaceted nature and the sociotechnical structure of AI systems imply a variety of values, practices, and measures to which accountability in AI can refer. We address this lack of clarity by defining accountability in terms of answerability, identifying three conditions of possibility (authority recognition, interrogation, and limitation of power), and an architecture of seven features (context, range, agent, forum, standards, process, (...) and implications). We analyse this architecture through four accountability goals (compliance, report, oversight, and enforcement). We argue that these goals are often complementary and that policy-makers emphasise or prioritise some over others depending on the proactive or reactive use of accountability and the missions of AI governance. (shrink)

On July 13, 2014, the director and producer of Midnight Rider turned themselves in to the Wayne County (Georgia) Sheriff's Department after being charged with involuntary manslaughter and criminal...

Recent work in moral philosophy has emphasized the foundational role played by interpersonal accountability in the analysis of moral concepts such as moral right and wrong, moral obligation and duty, blameworthiness, and moral responsibility (Darwall 2006; 2013a; 2013b). Extending this framework to the field of moral psychology, we hypothesize that our moral attitudes, emotions, and motives are also best understood as based in accountability. Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, we argue that the implicit aim of the central (...) moral motives and emotions is to hold people - whether oneself or others - accountable for compliance with the demands of morality. Moral condemnation is based in a motive to get perpetrators to hold themselves accountable for their wrongdoing, not, as is commonly supposed, a mere retributive motive to make perpetrators suffer (�2). And moral conscience is based in a genuine motive to hold oneself accountable for behaving in accordance with moral demands, not, as is commonly supposed, a mere egoistic motive to appear moral to others (�3). The accountability-based theory of the moral motives and emotions we offer provides better explanations of the extant empirical data than any of the major alternative theories of moral motivation. Moreover, conceiving of moral psychology in this way gives us a new and illuminating perspective on what makes morality distinctive: its essential connection to our practice of holding one another accountable (�4). (shrink)

Kaposy (2010) argues that contemporary neuroscience cannot provide rational reasons for abandoning folk psychological concepts like self, personhood, or free will because these concepts are necessa...

According to phenomenal conservatism or dogmatism, perceptual experiences can give us immediate justification for beliefs about the external world in virtue of having a distinctive kind of phenomenal character—namely phenomenal force. I present three cases to show that phenomenal force is neither pervasive among nor exclusive to perceptual experiences. The plausibility of such cases calls out for explanation. I argue that contrary to a long-held assumption, phenomenal force is a separate, non-perceptual state generated by some metacognitive mechanisms that monitor one’s (...) first-order mental processes and states. This new account advances our understanding of the nature of phenomenal force. (shrink)

It is often observed in metaethics that moral language displays a certain duality in as much as it seems to concern both objective facts in the world and subjective attitudes that move to action. In this paper, I defend The Dual Aspect Account which is intended to capture this duality: A person’s utterance of a sentence according to which φing has a moral characteristic, such as “φing is wrong,” conveys two things: The sentence expresses, in virtue of its conventional meaning, (...) the belief that φing has a moral property, and the utterance of the sentence carries a generalized conversational implicature to the effect that the person in question has an action-guiding attitude in relation to φing. This account has significant advantages over competing views: (i) As it is purely cognitivist, it does not have the difficulties of expressivism and various ecumenical positions. (ii) Yet, in spite of this, it can explain the close, “meaning-like,” connection between moral language and attitudes. (iii) In contrast to other pragmatic accounts, it is compatible with any relevant cognitivist view. (iv) It does not rest on a contentious pragmatic notion, such as conventional implicature. (v) It does not imply that utterances of complex moral sentences, such as conditionals, convey attitudes. In addition, the generalized implicature in question is fully calculable and cancellable. (shrink)

First in-depth analysis of engineers working in resource extraction, focusing particularly on those who viewed social responsibility as fundamental to their profession.

Both Husserl and Sartre speak of quasi-presence in their descriptions of the lived experience of imagination, and for both philosophers, accounting for quasi-presence means developing an account of the hyle proper to imagination. Guided by the perspective of fulfillment, Husserl’s theory of imaginary quasi-presence goes through three stages. Having experimented first with a depiction-model and then a perception-model, Husserl’s mature theory appeals to his innovative conception of inner consciousness. This elegant account nevertheless fails to do justice to the facticity (...) and bodily involvement of our imaginary experience. Sartre’s theory of analogon, based on his conception of imaginary quasi-presence as ‘magical’ self-affection, embodies important insights on these issues. Kinesthetic sensations and feelings are the modes in which we make use of own body to possess and be possessed by the imaginary object, thus lending it a semblance of bodily presence. (shrink)

The issue of communicated accountability is particularly important in Faith-Based Charity Organisations as the donated funds and use of those funds are often meant to fulfil religious obligations for the well-being of society. Integrating Stewart’s (1984) ladder of accountability with the Statement of Recommended Practice guidance for charities, this paper examines communicated accountability practices of Muslim and Christian Charity Organisations in England and Wales. Our content analysis results indicate communicated accountability to be generally limited, focusing on providing basic descriptive information (...) rather than judgement-based information. Our interviews with trustees and preparers of Trustee Annual Reports in Muslim Charity Organisations identified the reasons being due to high donor trust and consequently weak demand by stakeholders for the latter type of information, as well as internal organisational issues related to the organisational structure and culture, lack of internal professional expertise and high accountability cost. (shrink)

The paper argues that much of the difficulty with making progress on the issue of the normativity of logic for thought, as discussed in the literature, stems from a misapprehension of what logic is normative for. The claim is that, rather than mono-agent mental processes, logic in fact comprises norms for quite specific situations of multi-agent dialogical interactions, in particular special forms of debates. This reconceptualization is inspired by historical developments in logic and mathematics, in particular the pervasiveness of such (...) dialogical conceptions in the early days of logic in ancient Greece. The multi-agent, dialogical perspective then allows for the formulation of compelling 'bridge principles’ between the relation of logical consequence and dialogical normative principles, something that is notoriously difficult to achieve in a mono-agent setting pertaining exclusively to thought and belief. The upshot is also that the truth-preserving rules of logic generally do not have a primary normative bearing on mono-agent mental processes, and in this sense the paper sides with Harman's critique of the idea that logic has a normative import for thought and belief. (shrink)

I propose an account of aesthetic value, where aesthetic value lies in the process of aesthetic engagement: in our activity of perceiving, guiding our attention, interpreting, and otherwise wrestling with aesthetic objects. It also includes our social activities of engagement: arguing with each other, writing criticism, making top-ten lists. (This is a short summary of a view developed in greater detail elsewhere.).

In recent decades, participants in the debate about whether we are free and responsible agents have tended with increasing frequency to begin their papers or books by fixing the terms “free” and “responsible” in clear ways to avoid misunderstanding. This is an admirable development, and while some misunderstandings have certainly been avoided, and positions better illuminated as a result, new and interesting questions also arise. Two ways of fixing these terms and identifying the underlying concepts have emerged as especially influential, (...) one that takes the freedom required for responsibility to be understood in terms of accountability and the other in terms of desert. In this paper, I start by asking: are theorists talking about the same things, or are they really participating in two different debates? Are desert and accountability mutually entailing? I tentatively conclude that they are in fact mutually entailing. Coming to this conclusion requires making finer distinctions among various more specific and competing accounts of both accountability and desert. Ultimately, I argue, that there is good reason to accept that accountability and desert have the same satisfaction conditions. (shrink)

This essay warns of eroding accountability in computerized societies. It argues that assumptions about computing and features of situations in which computers are produced create barriers to accountability. Drawing on philosophical analyses of moral blame and responsibility, four barriers are identified: 1) the problem of many hands, 2) the problem of bugs, 3) blaming the computer, and 4) software ownership without liability. The paper concludes with ideas on how to reverse this trend.

In this chapter, the author argues against the commonly accepted reading, which was most fully articulated by Larry May in his article “Hobbes's Contract Theory ”. Contrary to that widely accepted interpretation, he shows that scholars overlook crucial distinctions that play a critical role in Hobbes's account. There Hobbes explained that reasonable men would appreciate the necessity of creating an artificial power to ensure that covenants would be “constant and lasting”. For Hobbes, the commonwealth is a distinct entity that men (...) “Cause” into existence by accepting “restraint” on their liberty in order to achieve “their own preservation, and a more contented life thereby”. The power fused in the People gives the congregation inordinate strength for security against the sovereign; the might of a Leviathan exceeds the power of any solitary sovereign. Adopting the complex account of the creation of civil society and the authorization of its sovereign has important implications for understanding Hobbes's political theory. (shrink)

This comprehensive study offers a balanced assessment of libertarian accounts of free will. Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, Clarke defends a type of event-causal view from popular objections concerning rationality and diminished control. He subtly explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. Clarke then sets out a highly original agent-causal account, one that integrates agent (...) causation and nondeterministic event causation. He defends this view from a number of objections but argues that we should find the substance causation required by any agent-causal account to be impossible. Clarke concludes that if a broad thesis of incompatibilism is correct--one on which both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism--then no libertarian account is entirely adequate. (shrink)

A chapter composed largely for undergraduate and postgraduate students that considers whether general facts about morality and our ability to make moral judgements count in favor of either theism or atheism.

We would like to thank an anonymous referee for his helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.

We add texture to the conclusion of Duchon and Drake (Journal of Business Ethics, 85, 2009, 301) that extreme narcissism is associated with unethical conduct. We argue that the special features possessed by financial accounting facilitate extreme narcissism in susceptible CEOs. In particular, we propose that extremely narcissistic CEOs are key players in a recurring discourse cycle facilitated by financial accounting language and measures. Such CEOs project themselves as the corporation they lead, construct a narrative about the corporation (...) and themselves using financial accounting measures, and then reflect on how their accounting-constructed performance is perceived by stakeholders. We do not present empirical evidence about whether the use of accounting language and measures leads to unethical behaviour by extreme narcissistic CEOs — although the conclusions of Duchon and Drake (2009) suggest empirical support is probable. Rather, we focus on developing alertness to the potential for accounting, when engaged by an extremely narcissistic CEO, to be a precursor or implement of unethical behaviour. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to argue that the difference between creative and non-creative mental processes is not a functional/computational, but an experiential one. In other words, what is distinctive about creative mental processes is not the functional/computational mechanism that leads to the emergence of a creative idea, be it the recombination of old ideas or the transformation of one’s conceptual space, but the way in which this mental process is experienced. The explanatory power of the functional/computational theories and (...) the experiential account is compared and it is pointed out that if creativity is a natural kind, it is not a functional/computational, but an experiential natural kind. (shrink)