To examine how different ownership structures, varying from diverse ownership bases to narrow ownership bases, influence the extent of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting by companies in emerging market. The motivation for this study is the reported inconsistent results for this association in developing countries and the lack of research in emerging markets. Eight hundred observations of 80 nonfinancial sector listed companies in the Amman Stock Exchange for the period 2006 to 2015 were used for a content analysis to assess (...) the extent of CSR reporting. Ordinary least square multiple regression analysis was undertaken to examine the association between five different ownership structures and their extent of CSR reporting. The results reveal three separate associations between the types of ownership and the extent of CSR reporting. First, the two types of ownership (foreign and government) have a significant and positive influence on the extent of CSR reporting. Second, another two types of ownership (Family and managerial) have a significantly negative association. Finally, institutional ownership has an insignificant and negligible influence on the extent of CSR reporting. These findings provide insights into how ownership structure influences the CSR reporting extent by emerging market companies such as Jordan. These findings suggest that policy makers, regulatory bodies, companies, and investors should increase their awareness about how different concentration of company ownership influences the extent companies voluntarily disclose CSR reporting. The evidence adds to the limited body of knowledge about different ownership groups' influence on the extent of CSR reporting in a developing country because few empirical studies have undertaken such a comprehensive analysis of this association. (shrink)

L’épistémologie est un domaine un peu oublié en théologie pratique, à la différence de la méthodologie. L’article développe l’hypothèse selon laquelle la manière dont un théologien ou une théologienne pratique situe la dimension empirique dans la construction d’ensemble de sa recherche, est significative d’une épistémologie implicite. Il y aurait des ancrages épistémologiques différents selon que les données du terrain sont situées en première partie, en deuxième partie ou disséminées tout au long de l’étude. Ce choix serait lié au statut de (...) l’expérience de foi dans la recherche. L’important est alors d’être bien au clair sur les fondements et implications de la manière choisie de développer la recherche. (shrink)

In vivo explore des questions fondamentales et des moments cruciaux de l’existence humaine – l’entrée en interaction avec une culture étrangère, la décision de se sortir d’une condition de vie routinière ou malheureuse, une action généreuse posée dans un contexte quotidien ordinaire – en fonction de leur potentiel de transformation de l’existence. En recourant à des illustrations tirées de la vie réelle et d’œuvres de fiction, Gabor Csepregi révèle le rôle primordial des sentiments personnels dans le façonnement de la vie (...) humaine et démontre le pouvoir formateur de la spontanéité en dehors du contexte traditionnel de l’éducation formelle. Ces moments, et notamment la façon dont ils perturbent l’ordre temporel ordinaire constituent des expériences vécues de notre vitalité. « Recourant à un langage clair et précis, In vivo captivera les philosophes et les intellectuels. Csepregi engage un dialogue entre diverses traditions, faisant appel aux meilleurs courants de plusieurs philosophies pour développer un point de vue unique ». - Gaëlle Fiasse, Université McGill. (shrink)

Ben Rich, J.D., Ph.D., presents a scholarly, passionate view of the ethics of the “barriers to effective pain management.” His manuscript is detailed, analytical, and compassionate. No reasonable sensitive person, especially a physician committed to caring for patients, can disagree with the proposal that human beings should have their physical, emotional, and spiritual pain tended to aggressively, meticulously, and compassionately. Similarly, the same individuals advocating for such pain management would agree that no one should go to jail unless he or (...) she is guilty of a serious crime, that decent people should not be robbed or murdered, that children should not be hungry or homeless, and that all citizens of the United States deserve healthcare. Our society attempts to achieve these goals. Laws are written, discussed, and approved by state and federal congresses, voted on by citizens, and theoretically upheld by the courts, churches, and decent individuals. But, unless the world suddenly becomes inhabited by virtuous, ethical humans who can unfailingly differentiate “good” from “bad,” then, in spite of an abundance of laws and lawyers, doctors, and nurses, this world will continue to have pain and suffering. And, although we want to hold our doctors, politicians, educators, champion athletes, and others to “higher standards” than the average citizen, it is best to remind ourselves frequently that all humans can be weak and are bound to make imprecise judgments, that there is not a homogenous definition of “good,” that values and religious beliefs are variable. (shrink)

Among the liveliest disputes in evolutionary biology today are disputes concerning the role of chance in evolution--more specifically, disputes concerning the relative evolutionary importance of natural selection vs. so-called "random drift". The following discussion is an attempt to sort out some of the broad issues involved in those disputes. In the first half of this paper, I try to explain the differences between evolution by natural selection and evolution by random drift. On some common construals of "natural selection", those two (...) modes of evolution are completely indistinguishable. Even on a proper construal of "natural selection", it is difficult to distinguish between the "improbable results of natural selection" and evolution by random drift. In the second half of this paper, I discuss the variety of positions taken by evolutionists with respect to the evolutionary importance of random drift vs. natural selection. I will then consider the variety of issues in question in terms of a conceptual distinction often used to describe the rise of probabilistic thinking in the sciences. I will argue, in particular, that what is going on here is not, as might appear at first sight, just another dispute about the desirability of "stochastic" vs. "deterministic" theories. Modern evolutionists do not argue so much about whether evolution is stochastic, but about how stochastic it is. (shrink)

This essay lays out the leading principles of the theories of definite descriptions advocated by Frege, Russell, and Hilbert and Bernays, and discusses various difficulties, philosophical and otherwise, with each treatment, fixing especially on the treatment of singular existence claims. Then the leading principles of free (definite) description theory are presented and it is shown how it resolves difficulties confronting the more traditional approaches. Finally, a pair of technical problems in free (definite) description theory are addressed. They help to show (...) the fecundity of this treatment of definite descriptions. (shrink)

"Theoretical pluralism" obtains when there are good evidential reasons for accommodating multiple theories of the same domain. Issues of "relative significance" often arise in connection with the investigation of such domains. In this paper, I describe and give examples of theoretical pluralism and relative significance issues. Then I explain why theoretical pluralism so often obtains in biology--and why issues of relative significance arise--in terms of evolutionary contingencies and the paucity or lack of laws of biology. Finally, I turn from explanation (...) to justification, and raise questions about the purpose and value of concerns and disagreements about relative significance. (shrink)

There can be good reasons to doubt the authority of a group of scientists. But those reasons do not include lack of unanimity among them. Indeed, holding science to a unanimity or near-unanimity standard has a pernicious effect on scientific deliberation, and on the transparency that is so crucial to the authority of science in a democracy. What authorizes a conclusion is the quality of the deliberation that produced it, which is enhanced by the presence of a non-dismissible minority. Scientists (...) can speak as one in more ways than one. We recommend a different sort of consensus that is partly substantive and partly procedural. It is a version of what Margaret Gilbert calls “joint acceptance” – we call it “deliberative acceptance.” It capitalizes on there being a persistent minority, and thereby encourages accurate reporting of the state of agreement and disagreement among deliberators. (shrink)

The classical/balance controversy continued along these lines throughout the first half of the sixties. Then, at about the same time that the classical position lost its leading advocate, the balance position received striking new support from Harry Harris, and independently from Dobzhansky's former student Lewontin, and Lewontin's research partner, Jack Hubby.80 These developments served more to reorient the controversy than to end it — and the resulting “neoclassical”/balance controversy is different enough to be grist for another mill.Social policy considerations no (...) longer play a role in keeping the dispute alive. This particular respect in which the issues have changed is, as Diane Paul suggests in her contribution to this volume, as striking as any other.82 There is, however, little danger of our forgetting that this was once much more than just a narrowly technical controversy — the additional social policy issues were far too blatant.However, although blatant, they were by no means the only, or even the most important, issues. In choosing to concentrate on the social policy considerations, I do not mean to suggest that the empirical issues were irrelevant, or simple and straightforward, or otherwise uninteresting. That is by no means the case. What I have tried to show is that there was much more to the classical/balance stalemate than just the empirical underdetermination of the theoretical issues, and that the empirical issues cannot be treated adequately without taking into account the social policy considerations that were involved. Dobzhansky and Muller both appealed to the dangers of misguided social policy that might have resulted from prematurely resolving their controversy in the other's favor. They called for high empirical standards on those grounds, more than once seeking to forestall the resolution of their dispute in this way. (shrink)

In “Spandrels,” Gould and Lewontin criticized what they took to be an all-too-common conviction, namely, that adaptation to current environments determines organic form. They stressed instead the importance of history. In this paper, we elaborate upon their concerns by appealing to other writings in which those issues are treated in greater detail. Gould and Lewontin’s combined emphasis on history was three-fold. First, evolution by natural selection does not start from scratch, but always refashions preexisting forms. Second, preexisting forms are refashioned (...) by the selection of whatever mutational variations happen to arise: the historical order of mutations needs to be taken into account. Third, the order of environments and selection pressures also needs to be taken into account. (shrink)

This is the first of a two-part essay on the history of debates concerning the creativity of natural selection, from Darwin through the evolutionary synthesis and up to the present. Here I focus on the mid-late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, with special emphasis on early Darwinism and its critics, the self-styled “mutationists.” The second part focuses on the evolutionary synthesis and some of its critics, especially the “neutralists” and “neo-mutationists.” Like Stephen Gould, I consider the creativity of natural (...) selection to be a key component of what has traditionally counted as “Darwinism.” I argue that the creativity of natural selection is best understood in terms of selection initiating evolutionary change, and selection being responsible for the presence of the variation it acts upon, for example by directing the course of variation. I consider the respects in which both of these claims sound non-Darwinian, even though they have long been understood by supporters and critics alike to be virtually constitutive of Darwinism. (shrink)

Challenging previous interpretations of Levinas that gloss over his use of the feminine or show how he overlooks questions raised by feminists, Claire Elise Katz explores the powerful and productive links between the feminine and religion in Levinas’s work. Rather than viewing the feminine as a metaphor with no significance for women or as a means to reinforce traditional stereotypes, Katz goes beyond questions of sexual difference to reach a more profound understanding of the role of the feminine in (...) Levinas’s conception of ethical responsibility. She combines feminist interpretations of Levinas with interpretations that focus on his Jewish writings to reveal that the feminine provides an important bridge between his philosophy and his Judaism. Katz’s reading of Levinas’s conception of the feminine against the backdrop of discussions of women of the Hebrew bible points to important shifts in contemporary philosophy toward the creation of life and care for the other. (shrink)

This study explores how paradoxical tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided through organizational mythmaking. By examining the European oil and gas supermajors’ “CEO-speak” about climate change, we show how mythmaking facilitates the disregarding, diverting, and/or displacing of sustainability tensions. In doing so, our findings further illustrate how certain defensive responses are employed: regression, or retreating to the comforts of past familiarities, fantasy, or escaping the harsh reality that fossil fuels and climate change are indeed irreconcilable, and projecting, (...) or shifting blame to external actors for failing to address climate change. By highlighting the discursive effects of enacting these responses, we illustrate how the European oil and gas supermajors self-determine their inability to substantively address the complexities of climate change. We thus argue that defensive responses are not merely a form of mismanagement as the paradox and corporate sustainability literature commonly suggests, but a strategic resource that poses serious ethical concerns given the imminent danger of issues such as climate change. (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)

Of all the scientists discussed by Mitman, Keller, and Taylor, Odum stands out most as the technocrat, the social engineer. But less obvious candidates, like Allee, also fancied themselves in this capacity: “Our task as biologists and as citizens of a civilized country, is a practical engineering job.” Allee had in mind the establishment of an international cooperative order based on his biological principles. He apparently did not recognize the extent to which his principles were themselves an engineering feat: he (...) had already constructed a world in which eternal peace and order were possible.To an engineer in the traditional sense, the world is changeable, but not in all respects; there are constraints, and these constraints are taken very seriously. Scientists acting as engineers, in the traditional sense, must also pay attention to constraints. But scientists sometimes also take the option of engineering the very constraints, intellectually reconstructing the world so that it can (supposedly) be physically manipulated in the desired direction. There seems to be a lot of engineering, in the extended sense, going on in the very interesting stories that Mitman, Keller, and Taylor tell. (shrink)

Using Deleuze and Guattari's concept of stratigraphy, it is possible to open the question of the limits and range of the Anthropocene. Geological stratification has enabled a view of time and the earth that has opened new horizons, but this mode of stratification is one among others. Other stratifications are possible, not only those that would be compossible with the story of the Anthropocene, but also incompossible stratifications, at odds with the history of man.

This is a collection of papers presented at the Symposium "Are There are Laws of Biology?", in the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. It includes four separate papers: "Why Do Biologists Argue Like They Do?" by John Beatty, "Does Biology Have Laws? The Experimental Evidence" by Robert Brandon, "Two Outbreaks of Lawlessness in Recent Philosophy of Biology" by Elliott Sober, and "Pragmatic Laws" by Sandra D. Mitchell.

In communities of inquiry, dialogue is central as both the means and the outcome of collective inquiry. Indeed, features of dialogue—including formulating and asking questions, developing hypotheses and explanations, and offering and requesting reasons—are often highlighted as playing a significant role in the quality of the dialogue that unfolds. We inquire further into the quality of dialogue by arguing that dialogue should enable the expansion of epistemic openness, rather than its contraction, and that this is especially important in multicultural communities (...) of inquiry to acknowledge the cultural, perspectival, and experiential differences that exist alongside of similarities as resources for dialogue. The purpose of this article is to highlight two discourse practices that exemplify the nature of discourse as social practice and can be used in communities of inquiry. Attending to these discourse practices may enable teachers and students to reflect upon dialogue as it unfolds. First, we situate ourselves in multicultural classrooms in British Columbia, Canada. Then we articulate three principles of communities of inquiry. Next we describe and exemplify two discourse practices: heteroglossic attunement and lexical awareness. When attended to by teachers and students, 1) heteroglossic attunement enables teachers and students to begin to identify, reflect upon, and discuss the voices and perspectives that are drawn upon as participants inquire together and 2) lexical awareness enables teachers and students to begin to identify their attributions of thinking and feeling to social actors and to recognize how naming social actors positions them in an evolving set of social relations. Rather than a neutral medium of communication, social speech and dialogue is inherently value laden. Attending closely to the discourse that constitutes dialogue in a community of inquiry is a significant pedagogical tool for both teachers and students to expand epistemic openness and make visible learning as it unfolds. (shrink)

Both in his earliest debates with thinkers such as Foucault and Levinas, and in later critiques of political immediacy, Derrida invoked the inescapable burden of a necessary but impossible universalism. By raising the stakes so high it would seem that deconstruction generates hyperbolic conceptions of ethics and justice, but also precludes any form of day to day political positivity. In this essay I pursue the seemingly less ‘ethical’ conception of play in Derrida's work to argue for a multiple universalism.

A general case about the insights and oversights of molecular genetics is argued for by considering two specific cases: the first concerns the bearing of molecular genetics on Mendelian genetics, and the second concerns the bearing of molecular genetics on the replicability of the genetic material. As in the first case, it is argued that Mendel's law of segregation cannot be explained wholly in terms of molecular genetics--the law demands evolutionary scrutiny as well. In the second case, it is argued (...) that an account of the replicability of the genetic material in terms of molecular genetics is not entirely independent of evolutionary considerations, in the sense that it raises further evolutionary questions. The limitations of the molecular-genetic approach in these cases point to the limitations of that approach in general. (shrink)

An internal critique of anthropology in recent decades has shifted the focus and scope of anthropological work on emotion. In this article I review the changes, explore the pros and cons of leading anthropological approaches and theories, and argue that—so far as anthropology is concerned—only detailed narrative accounts can do full justice to the complexity of emotions. A narrative approach captures both the particularity and the temporal dimension of emotion with greater fidelity than semantic, synchronic, and discourse-based approaches.