By employing the theoretical template provided by agency theory, this article contributes a detailed clinical analysis of a large multinational Canada-headquartered telecommunications company, Nortel. Our analysis reveals a twenty-first century norm of usual suspects: a CEO whose compensation is well above those of his peers, a dysfunctional board of directors, acts of income smoothing to preserve the confidence of volatile investors, and revelations of financial irregularities followed by a downfall. In many ways, the spectacular rise and – sudden – fall (...) of Nortel illustrates excesses of actors within, and contradictions of the system of corporate governance implied by the agency model. Furthermore, this case illustrates limitations of the agency framework in complex situations with short-term oriented investors. (shrink)

Traditional treatments of accountant ethics make implicit assumptions inconsistent with a sociological perspective. This paper identifies the ways in which accountant ethics have been approached both in literature pertaining to practice and the classroom. The boundaries of the topic, when its definitions are left tacit, systematically preclude many important features of ethics. Included in these are sociological treatments of the accounting profession as a group, extra-personal aspects of decision making, the stratification of accounting practice, and a sense of ethical action. (...) The paper concludes with an illustration of how institutional theory has the potential to create a systematic sociological interpretation of accountant ethics. (shrink)

By employing the theoretical template provided by agency theory, this article contributes a detailed clinical analysis of a large multinational Canada-headquartered telecommunications company, Nortel. Our analysis reveals a twenty-first century norm of usual suspects: a CEO whose compensation is well above those of his peers, a dysfunctional board of directors, acts of income smoothing to preserve the confidence of volatile investors, and revelations of financial irregularities followed by a downfall. In many ways, the spectacular rise and – sudden – fall (...) of Nortel illustrates excesses of actors within, and contradictions of the system of corporate governance implied by the agency model. Furthermore, this case illustrates limitations of the agency framework in complex situations with short-term oriented investors. (shrink)

Knepper criticizes existing efforts in the philosophy of religion for being out of step with, and therefore useless to, the academic study of religion, then forwards a new program for philosophy of religion that is in step with, and therefore useful to, the academic study of religion.

Academic integrity violations on college campuses continue to be a significant concern that draws public attention. Even though AI has been the subject of numerous studies offering explanations and recommendations, academic dishonesty persists. Consequently, this has rekindled interest in understanding AI behavior and its influencers. This paper focuses on the AI violations of plagiarism and sharing homework for freshman business students, examining the factors that influence a student’s intention to plagiarize or share homework with others. Using a sample of more (...) than 1300 freshman business students over 2 years, we modeled intent to plagiarize and intent to share homework using factors in the Theory of Planned Behavior in addition to past violation behavior and moral obligation. Based on the results of this study, attitude, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, and in addition past behavior and moral obligation, were found to significantly influence an individual’s intention to violate academic integrity, explaining 33 and 35 % of the variance in intention to commit an AI violation for sharing homework and plagiarism, respectively. These results contribute to a better understanding of individuals’ motivations for plagiarizing and sharing homework, which is a necessary step toward reducing academic integrity violations. (shrink)

Robin et al. (1996) suggested a new construct when studying ethical behavioral intention which they entitled PIE (perceived importance). They empirically tested the PIE construct and found it to significantly impact both ethical judgment and behavioral intention. The present study extends and validates Robin et al.s work on PIE using a different context, different scenarios and a different sample. The findings indicate strong support for the validity of Robin et al.s PIE instrument and show PIE to significantly influence ethical judgment (...) (attitude) and behavioral intention. This study also indicates the sex of the individual affects the individuals perception of importance and is a significant influence of ethical judgment and behavioral intention. Future ethical models and studies should include PIE as a possible influence on behavioral intention. (shrink)

The notion of accountability was introduced by Harold Garfinkel in the opening pages of Studies in Ethnomethodology as part of his ‘central recommendation’ for sociological inquiry. Though the term itself first appears in the Studies, it will be argued that elements of the idea were already discernible in earlier writings. The current article traces the development of the notion from its early emergence in the proto-ethnomethodological period, through its elaboration in the Studies, and, finally, to its refinement in certain later (...) works produced toward the end of the author’s career. In so doing, it reveals the centrality of the notion to ethnomethodologically-informed study and shows its enduring contribution to social theory. (shrink)

Sound is an inherent component of the environment that provides conditions and information necessary for many animal activities. Soniferous species require specific acoustic and physical conditions suitable for their signals to be transmitted, received, and effectively interpreted to successfully identify and utilize resources in their environment and interact with conspecifics and other heterospecific organisms. We propose the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis to explain how the acoustic environment influences habitat selection of sound-dependent species. We postulate that sound-dependent species select and occupy habitats (...) with unique acoustic characteristics that are essential to their functional needs and conducive to the threshold of sound frequency they produce and detect. These acoustic habitats are based on the composition of biophony, geophony, and technophony in the soundscape and on the biosemiotics mechanisms described in the eco-field hypothesis. The Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis initiates questions of habitat selection that go beyond the physical attributes of the environment by applying ecoacoustics theory. We outline the theoretical basis of the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis and provide examples from the literature to support its assumptions. The concept of acoustic habitats has been documented in the literature for many years but here, we accurately and extensively define acoustic habitat and we put this concept into a unified theory. We also include perspectives on how the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis can stimulate a paradigm shift in conservation strategies for threatened and endangered species. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson; VII*—Equivocation and Existence, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 109–128, https://doi.org/10.

We report the results of an experiment designed to determine the effects of psychological proximity—proxied by awareness of pain and friendship—on moral reasoning. Our study tests the hypotheses that a moral agent’s emphasis on justice decreases with proximity, while his/her emphasis on care increases. Our study further examines how personality, gender, and managerial status affect the importance of care and justice in moral reasoning. We find support for the main hypotheses. We also find that care should be split into two (...) components, one related to protection and the other to the preservation of relationships. Although gender does not affect moral reasoning directly, we find that it does so indirectly via personality, controlling for age, professional status, and professional background. We do not find a significant effect of managerial status on ethics of justice, but do find that holding a managerial position has a negative impact on ethics of care. Regarding personality, we detect significant positive effects of conscientiousness on ethics of justice and of neuroticism on ethics of care. (shrink)

The concept of medical necessity plays a central role in many healthcare systems, including Canada's, by helping determine which healthcare services will receive funding. Despite its significance in health policy frameworks, medical necessity has proven to be notoriously difficult to define and operationalise. A shift toward a more personalised and genetically‐informed approach to the provision of healthcare seems likely to heighten associated policy challenges. One of the stated goals of personalised medicine is to save healthcare systems money by facilitating the (...) use of less and more effective treatments. However, any cost saving potential may ultimately be thwarted by physicians' legal and ethical obligations, given that physicians will inevitably be required to implement and define the bounds of genetically‐informed medical necessity for their patients. (shrink)

BackgroundThe increasing push to commercialize university research has emerged as a significant science policy challenge. While the socio-economic benefits of increased and rapid research commercialization are often emphasized in policy statements and discussions, there is less mention or discussion of potential risks. In this paper, we highlight such potential risks and call for a more balanced assessment of the commercialization ethos and trends.DiscussionThere is growing evidence that the pressure to commercialize is directly or indirectly associated with adverse impacts on the (...) research environment, science hype, premature implementation or translation of research results, loss of public trust in the university research enterprise, research policy conflicts and confusion, and damage to the long-term contributions of university research.SummaryThe growing emphasis on commercialization of university research may be exerting unfounded pressure on researchers and misrepresenting scientific research realities, prospects and outcomes. While more research is needed to verify the potential risks outlined in this paper, policy discussions should, at a minimum, acknowledge them. (shrink)

Developments in uterus transplant put assisted gestation within meaningful range of clinical success for women with uterine infertility who want to gestate children. Should this kind of transplantation prove routine and effective for those women, would there be any morally significant reason why men or transgender women should not be eligible for the same opportunity for gestation? Getting to the point of safe and effective uterus transplantation for those parties would require a focused line of research, over and above the (...) study of uterus transplantation for non-transgender women. Some commentators object to the idea that the state has any duty to sponsor research of this kind. They would limit all publicly-funded fertility research to sex-typical ways of having children, which they construe as the basis of reproductive rights. This objection has no force against privately-funded research, of course, and in any case not all social expenditures are responses to ‘rights’ properly speaking. Another possible objection raised against gestation by transgender women is that it could alter the social meaning of sexed bodies. This line of argument fails, however, to substantiate a meaningful objection to gestation by transgender women because social meanings of sexed bodies do not remain constant and because the change in this case would not elicit social effects significant enough to justify closing off gestation to transgender women as a class. (shrink)

Antinatalist commentators recommend that humanity bring itself to a close, on the theory that pain and suffering override the value of any possible life. Other commentators do not require the voluntary extinction of human beings, but they defend that outcome if people were to choose against having children. Against such views, Richard Kraut has defended a general moral obligation to people the future with human beings until the workings of the universe render such efforts impossible. Kraut advances this view on (...) the grounds that we are obliged to exercise beneficence toward others and on the grounds that the goods available in human lives are morally compelling. This account ultimately succeeds in making no more than a prima facie defense of human perpetuation because considerations of beneficence could override – in some cases probably should – override any duty to perpetuate human beings. While the goods of human life may be distinctive, they cannot serve as reason-giving in regard to their own perpetuation. Ironically, the exercise of beneficence may authorize the extinction of human beings, if it becomes possible to enhance the goods available to human descendants in a way that moves them away from human nature as now given. The defense of a morally obligatory and strictly human future remains elusive, even as it becomes morally desirable to work against Fateful Catastrophes, those human-caused events that threaten to extinguish existing lives already good and enriching for their bearers. (shrink)

At first glance, it seems difficult to object to any program that merits the label “harm reduction.” If harm is bad, as everyone recognizes, then surely reducing it is good. What’s the problem? The problem, we submit, is twofold. First, there’s more to “harm reduction,” as that term is typically used, than simply the reduction of harm. Some of the wariness about harm-reduction programs may result from the nebulous “more.” Thus, part of our task is to provide a clear definition (...) of harm reduction. Next, we turn to a second problem: a worry about complicity. Those who object to harm reduction programs fear that participation in such programs would make them complicit in activities they deem immoral. In this paper we argue that this fear is largely unwarranted. We use supervised injection sites —safe spaces for the use of risky drugs—as our paradigmatic case of harm reduction. These SISs are generally offered in the hope of reducing harm to both the drug user and the public. For this reason, our analysis focuses on complicity in harm. We draw upon the work of Gregory Mellema as our framework. Mellema offers three ways one can be complicit in harm caused by another: by enabling, facilitating or condoning it. We argue that one who operates an SIS is not complicit in any of these ways, while also laying out the conditions that must be met if one is to argue that harm reduction entails complicity in non-consequentialist wrongdoing. (shrink)

Bioconservative commentators argue that parents should not take steps to modify the genetics of their children even in the name of enhancement because of the damage they predict for values, identities and relationships. Some commentators have even said that adults should not modify themselves through genetic interventions. One commentator worries that genetic modifications chosen by adults for themselves will undermine moral agency, lead to less valuable experiences and fracture people's sense of self. These worries are not justified, however, since the (...) effects of modification will not undo moral agency as such. Adults can still have valuable experiences, even if some prior choices no longer seem meaningful. Changes at the genetic level will not always, either, alienate people from their own sense of self. On the contrary, genetic modifications can help amplify choice, enrich lives and consolidate identities. Ultimately, there is no moral requirement that people value their contingent genetic endowment to the exclusion of changes important to them in their future genetic identities. Through weighing risks and benefits, adults also have the power to consent to—and assume the risks of—genetic modifications for themselves in a way not possible in prenatal genetic interventions. (shrink)

This chapter explores the approaches taken by eighteenth-century British writers to the relationship between aesthetic judgments of beauty, sublimity, and the picturesque, and the faculty of taste that makes them possible. Writers in the tradition emphasize the fit between qualities in objects so judged and a capacity to be affected by them. This common theme unites the various contributions, but they can be divided in terms of the faculty on which different writers place emphasis. A first group isolates an internal (...) sense ; a second emphasizes the imagination, and a third appeals to principles of association. Each group is discussed in turn and details of the respective positions explored. (shrink)

A noteworthy development that has transpired in American sociology in the past quarter century has been the increasingly sophisticated interest in the analysis of human cultural systems. Sadly, however, these analyses reveal that social scientists rarely appreciate the profoundly evolutionary aspects of human culture. The chief purpose of this essay is to address this shortcoming and to offer some tentative suggestions toward its rectification. The essay begins by briefly reviewing recent developments in the analysis of cultural systems, primarily by reference (...) to the influential work of Wuthnow. Second, a common flaw in these approaches is addressed—namely, the absence of any recognition of the value of grounding sociocultural theory in an informed evolutionary framework—and the case is made that this shortcoming is avoidable, even within the context of the intellectual traditions of the social sciences. Third, the evolutionary foundations of human cultural behavior are explored in terms of an analysis of relevant theoretical and empirical developments in the evolutionary neurosciences. Fourth, the value of these insights is illustrated by reference to an evolutionary critique of a recent and thought-provoking contribution to the study of modern political culture—Douglas and Wildavsky’s analysis ofRisk and Culture. Finally, the article concludes by emphasizing the value of and the necessity for incorporating evolutionary reasoning into the domain of sociocultural theory. (shrink)

This article attempts to sketch out a view of language as a relational–linguistic spiral by discussing some implications of the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein for language in general. Language is cast as a spiral which revolves around a center of ‘human relationality’ that anchors all our speech and concepts but which revolves in an ever–widening way into an arena of meaning we call language. Language creates linguistic space for experience and invites one into these new experiences. The borders of our (...) language are thus not the absolute limits of our world but the admitted limits of our experience. Because the enterprise of language is inherently open, there must be a space for theological language and for the possibility at least of the kind of experiences described therein. Tracing the relational ‘vectors’ involved in language can also provide a platform for theological and even inter–religious dialogue. (shrink)

The main result of this paper is that KT is closed under a cancellation principle. This result extends to KTG1, but it does not extend to modal systems associated with the provability interpretation of L, such as KW and KT4Grz. Following Williamson, these results are applied to philosophical concerns about the proper form for theories of meaning, via the interpretation of L as some kind of veriflability. The cancellation principle can then be read as saying that verifilability conditions and falsiflability (...) conditions jointly determine truth conditions. (shrink)

I argue that one central resource for ethical thinking, seriously under-explored in contemporary anglophone philosophy, is moral phenomenology, the exploration of the texture and quality of moral experience. Perhaps a barrier that has prevented people from using this resource is that it’s hard to talk about experience. But such knowledge can be communicated, e.g. by poetry and drama. In having such experiences, either in real life or at second-hand through art, we can gain moral knowledge, rather as Mary the colour (...) scientist can gain knowledge of colours; such knowledge is a real cognitive gain, but it is not knowledge of the propositional kind that philosophers have usually focused on. (shrink)

The human mind has proven uniquely capable of unraveling untold mysteries, and yet, the mind is fundamentally challenged when it turns back on itself to ask what it itself is. How do we conceive of mind in this postmodern world; how can we use philosophical anthropology to understand mind and its functions? While philosophers and social scientists have made important contributions to our understanding of mind, existing theories are insufficient for penetrating the complexities of mind in the twenty-first century. Mind (...) Unmasked: A Political Phenomenology of Consciousness draws on twentieth-century philosophies of consciousness to explain the phenomenon of mind in the broadest sense of the word. Michael A. Weinstein and Timothy M. Yetman develop a thought provoking discourse that moves beyond the nature of the human experience of mind at both the individual and interpersonal levels and present a meditation on life in the contemporary world of global mass-mediated human culture. (shrink)

In this article we tackle the issue of diachronic variation in constructional semantics through an exploration of the (recent) semantic history of the well-established English ditransitive or double object argument structure construction. Starting from the assumption that schematic syntactic patterns are not fundamentally different from lexical items, we will show that — similar to the diachronic semantic development of lexemes — the semantics of argument structure constructions in general and that of double object constructions in particular, is vulnerable to semasiological (...) shifts as well. More specifically, the analysis, which compares data from 18th-century Late Modern English with present-day English, shows that the double object construction's semantic evolution presents a case of specialization, in which the construction has come to be associated with a significantly narrower range of meanings. It will further be argued that such patterns of semantic change are best captured in a model of argument structure semantics which discriminates between central and lesscentral or prototypical and non-prototypical uses. (shrink)

The paper defends the infallibilist account of evidential support in Knowledge and its limits from Jessica Brown’s objections in her book Fallibilism: Evidence and Knowledge. By the standards of abductive methodology, Brown’s arguments are ineffective because she offers no developed alternative account of evidential support. Most of her objections apply to the standard probabilistic structure of my account; they are not specific to its distinctively knowledge-first features. Brown’s objection from ‘infelicity data’ is analogous to one from such data to standard (...) accounts of deductive validity as truth-preservation. Contrary to Brown’s assumption, my use of excusability in discussion of sceptical scenarios involves no attempt to give it a precise conceptual analysis. (shrink)

Lays out a general framework for radical interpretation, which the ensuing chapters apply, respectively, to the theory of reference and to the philosophy of logic. McCarthy's main claim is that a relatively modest set of constitutive principles of interpretation can serve to constrain the semantic description of the language and attitudes of an idealized agent or population in such a way as to resolve the indeterminacies of interpretation that naturally present themselves. The starting points of the discussion are the constraints (...) on interpretation suggested by Davidson and Lewis, which are found to admit many incompatible semantic descriptions of a simple extensional language, if any at all. McCarthy then investigates some obstructions to extending this argument to languages involving certain modalities, resulting in a limited remedy for Quinean indeterminacies by a partial endorsement of the constraints on interpretation suggested by the aforementioned commentators. McCarthy finally proposes a further constraint on interpretation, satisfaction of what he calls the ‘Rigidity Condition’, which is argued to resolve all cases of referential indeterminacies that are distinctively Quinean. (shrink)

A commentary on “Time to Decriminalize HIV Status,” from the September‐October 2013 issue.

In the face of growing public sentiment that AIDS is getting more than its share of media attention, resources, and social indulgence, we do well to remember that HIV remains a highly lethal, communicable virus.

What sex is permissible, if any, in non-clinical research relationships? In reply to my call for a code of conduct for non-clinical research, some commentators have called for more training in such matters, but this kind of training will not go very far without some kind of governing standards yet to be determined. It is not enough to assume that unarticulated opinions will suffice. Neither will approaches that involve even greater scrutiny over research, as if to divide research into two (...) categories: one in which sex with subjects is permissible and the other in which sex is impermissible. No practical solution to exploitation will be more important than having a code of ethics that guides decision-makers where institutional review bodies do not tread. (shrink)