The growth of responsible innovation scholarship has been mirrored by a proliferation of RI definitions and practices, as well as a recognition of the importance of context for RI. This study investigates how researchers in the field of nanotechnology for food and agriculture define and practice RI, as well as what motivations they see for pursuing RI. We conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with nano-agrifood researchers from industry and academia in the USA, where we asked them to describe their RI definitions, (...) practices, and motivations. We analyzed the emergent themes from these interviews, including how the themes aligned with four prominent RI principles. We found that nano-agrifood researchers largely focused their descriptions of RI definitions, practices, and motivations around a narrow envisioning of the RI principle of anticipation — emphasizing product safety, efficacy, and efficiency. We also found noteworthy tensions surrounding the less frequently mentioned RI principles. For example, some researchers envisioned inclusion as a way to align products with industry interests while others saw it as a way to align products with the public good. Concerning motivations for RI, some researchers viewed RI as a way to protect one’s reputation and avoid lawsuits while others viewed it as a way to improve human well-being and solve societal problems. Given these findings, future efforts to foster RI within nano-agrifoods should promote discussions among researchers concerning what it means to responsibly innovate and what practices this could entail, particularly beyond ensuring product safety, efficacy, and efficiency. (shrink)

Mastery imagery has been shown to be associated with more positive cognitive and emotional responses to stress, but research is yet to investigate the influence of mastery imagery ability on imagery’s effectiveness in regulating responses to acute stress, such as competition. Furthermore, little research has examined imagery’s effectiveness in response to actual competition. This study examined (a), whether mastery imagery ability was associated with stress response changes to a competitive stress task, a car racing computer game, following an imagery intervention, (...) and (b), the effects of different guided imagery content on pre-task cognitive and emotional responses. In Session 1, 78 participants (M age = 20.03 years, SD = 1.28) completed ratings of pre-task anxiety intensity and direction, confidence, and perceived control. Imagery ability was also assessed before completing the task. In Session 2, participants were randomly allocated to an imagery condition (positive mastery, negative mastery, relaxation) or control group (no imagery) before completing the task and outcome measures again. For the negative mastery group, greater positive mastery imagery ability was associated with greater perceived control and perceiving anxiety as more facilitative. Furthermore, mastery imagery ability moderated the relationship between anxiety intensity and direction. Altogether, results suggest that positive mastery imagery ability may act as a potential buffer against the effects of negative images. (shrink)

Abstract:In the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake on January 12, 2010, the representative victim-survivor in multiple media sites appeared to the world in the face of the Haitian child-cum-orphan. This poignant image of loss and suffering lent urgency to a range of altruistic responses—or rather, paternalistic interventions—by white families in the U.S. I argue that in both narrative and practice, dominant constructions of normative (white) motherhood were exaggerated and made hypervisible, which propelled the actual lived experience of Haitian mothers (...) further into oblivion. In this article, I examine the discursive formations that produce Haitian women as “deviant black mothers” in transnational contexts. In similar ways, “the beggar mother” construct in the Dominican national media engenders powerful ideas about maternal neglect that link up with constructions of migrant illegality, criminality, and poverty. Drawing upon black and transnational feminist empirical analysis, I demonstrate how such discursive formations affectively circulate within transnational imaginaries and quotidian racial intimacies to effect forms of surveillance, objectification, and regulation of Haitian women and, by extension, their children who face an ever-greater risk of “statelessness.”. (shrink)

This paper examines the interplay of semantics and pragmatics within the domain of film. Films are made up of individual shots strung together in sequences over time. Though each shot is disconnected from the next, combinations of shots still convey coherent stories that take place in continuous space and time. How is this possible? The semantic view of film holds that film coherence is achieved in part through a kind of film language, a set of conventions which govern the relationships (...) between shots. In this paper, we develop and defend a new version of the semantic view. We articulate it for a pair of conventions that govern spatial relations between viewpoints. One such rule is already well-known; sometimes called the "180° Rule," we term it the X-Constraint; to this we add a previously unrecorded rule, the T-Constraint. As we show, both have the effect, in different ways, of limiting the way that viewpoint can shift through space from shot to shot over the course of a film sequence. Such constraints, we contend, are analogous to relations of discourse coherence that are widely recognized in the linguistic domain. If film is to have a language, it is a language made up of rules like these. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and defend an explication of content in terms of the mathematical notion of information. In its most general formulation, the theory says that two states have the same content just in case they carry the same information, relative to a communication network. My account reifies content (it is the discrete counterpart to continuous information) and supports the idea that agents have internal means of comparing the contents of two thoughts. Further, it makes sense to say (...) that agents have communicated successfully when they coordinate on content in this sense; they have transmitted information without loss. (shrink)

The paper proposes a minimal definition of dreaming in terms of immersive spatiotemporal hallucination (ISTH) occurring in sleep or during sleep–wake transitions and under the assumption of reportability. I take these conditions to be both necessary and sufficient for dreaming to arise. While empirical research results may, in the future, allow for an extension of the concept of dreaming beyond sleep and possibly even independently of reportability, ISTH is part of any possible extension of this definition and thus is a (...) constitutive condition of dreaming. I also argue that the proposed ISTH model of dreaming, in conjunction with considerations on the epistemic relationship between dreaming and dream reports, raises important questions about the extent to which dreams typically involve a detailed body representation—an assumption that plays an important role in philosophical work on dreaming. As a commonly accepted definition of dreaming is lacking in current dream research, the ISTH model, which integrates conceptual analysis and epistemological considerations with results from empirical research, is an important contribution to this field. By linking dreaming to felt presence, full-body illusions, and autoscopic phenomena such as out-of-body experiences in wakefulness and in the hypnagogic state, the ISTH model of dreaming also helps integrate dream research, both theoretically and experimentally, with the study of other altered states of consciousness involving hallucinations. It makes straightforward and investigable predictions by claiming that all of these experiences have amodal spatiotemporal hallucinations as their common denominator. Finally, it is theoretically relevant for the philosophical discussion on minimal phenomenal selfhood. (shrink)

This article examines how private equity returns in Asia are related to levels of legal protection and corruption. We utilize a unique data set comprising over 750 returns to private equity transactions across 20 developing and developed countries in Asia. The data indicate that legal protections are an important determinant of private equity returns in Asia, but also that private equity managers are able to mitigate the potential for corruption. The quality of legal system (including legal protections) is positively related (...) to returns. Inefficient legal protections negatively impact transaction structures and economic certainty when exiting investments. We also find that private equity managers, irrespective of the quality of legal system they are operating within, can mitigate the potential impact of corruption. Private equity returns are higher in countries with higher levels of corruption, controlling for legal systems. This finding is consistent with the view that private equity managers bring about organizational change to alleviate the costs of corruption. Our findings are robust to inclusion of controls for Hofstede cultural variables, economic conditions, and transaction specific characteristics, as well as consideration of econometric sample selection methods for unexited investments. (shrink)

Advances in our understanding of appraisal processes and emotion regulation have been two of the most important contributions of research on cognition and emotion in recent decades. Interestingly, however, progress in these two areas has been less mutually informative than one might expect or desire. To help remedy this situation, we provide an integration of appraisal theory and the process model of emotion regulation by describing parallel, interacting and iterative systems for emotion generation and emotion regulation. Outputs of the emotion (...) generation system are perceived by the emotion regulation system, and emotion regulation strategies then modulate emotion by intervening at specific stages of the emotion generation system, ultimately changing appraisal dimensions. We hope that our unified perspective will encourage and guide future research at the interface of cognition and emotion. (shrink)

According to a standard characterization of dispositions, when a disposition is activated by a stimulus, a manifestation of that disposition typically occurs. For example, when flammable gasoline encounters a spark in an oxygen-rich environment, the manifestation of flammability—combustion—occurs. In the dispositions/powers literature, it is common to assume that a manifestation is an effect of a disposition being activated. (I use “disposition” and “power” interchangeably). I address two questions in this chapter: Could all manifestations be effects that involve things acquiring only (...) dispositional properties? And, is thinking of manifestations as contributions to effects preferable to thinking of them as effects? I defend negative responses to both questions. If all properties are dispositional, as the pandispositionalists claim, then any time the activation of a disposition results is something acquiring a new property, it results in something acquiring another disposition. Some worry that a vicious regress ensues (Swinburne, 1980; Bird, 2007a, 2007b: 132-46). While I believe that regress arguments can be addressed, my worry is that, on the pandispositionalist view, manifestations become unobservable. Thinking of manifestations as effects is problematic in cases where what actually occurs is not the kind of effect that the power is a power for, but rather a complex interaction of various powers. Because of this, some prefer to think of manifestations as contributions to effects (Molnar, 2003: 194-8; Mumford, 2009). I argue against this proposal on the ground that it introduces mysterious new entities into our ontology. In the end, the most plausible view is that a single kind of power can have different kinds of effects, some of which involve the instantiation of non-dispositional properties. I proceed as follows. In the first section of this chapter, I show that the philosophical concept of a manifestation is the concept of an effect. In the second section, I argue against the claim that all manifestations involve instantiations of only dispositional properties. In the third section, I argue against the view that manifestations are contributions rather than effects. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the processes by which entrepreneurial opportunities are cocreated between entrepreneurs and their stakeholders. The longitudinal case study of de novo firm Wakefield Seafoods seeks to understand the underlying dynamics of phenomena that play out over time as stakeholders emerge and their contributions become essential to the opportunity formation process. The king crab data show that under conditions of uncertainty, characterized by incomplete or missing knowledge, entrepreneurial processes of experimentation, failure, and learning were effective in forming (...) and exploiting an opportunity. Moreover, contrary to existing literature that either emphasizes heroic entrepreneurs or downplays their value, this article shows that both the vision of the entrepreneur and the stakeholder contributions are critical. This detailed examination of process data shows that the cumulative actions made by entrepreneurs in concert with their stakeholders formed an opportunity that coalesced into a new market. (shrink)

The Venetian state has aptly been called a work of art. So absolute and necessary appear its fictions that continuity and tradition are always in the foreground, while change recedes to the distant horizon. It is this quality of timeless truth that characterizes the “myth of Venice”: Venice remains perfect and unchanged while other governments rise and fall. It remains unchanged because of two things: the “perfect” system of government, combining the best features of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy; and the (...) reliance on impartial justice, the key to preserving harmony between conflicting groups. (shrink)

We investigate how firms adjust corporate pension plans in response to economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Using a sample of US-listed firms, we find that firms increase pension underfunding levels when facing higher EPU. The result is robust to controlling for pension portfolio returns, discount rates, plan sizes, pension liability, numbers of employees, other macroeconomic factors, difference-in-differences and instrumental variable estimation, and additional evidence of pension risk-shifting. Further analysis reveals that financial distress and information asymmetry induced through EPU are the potential (...) channels. The effect is stronger for firms having CEOs being excessively paid, using cash flow as a performance metric in CEO compensation, paying high dividends, and having short-term institutional investors, whereas the presence of unions, positive corporate culture, and social capital alleviate the effect. Notably, managers, not shareholders, appear to be the party reaping the benefits. Our findings suggest that firms may shift risk to employees in response to heightened uncertainty and institutional characteristics play a moderating role in this crucial business ethics issue. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that moral rules and principles, such as ‘Keep your promises,’ ‘Respect autonomy,’ and ‘Distribute goods according to need ,’ should play an essential role in our moral deliberation. Particularists have challenged this view by arguing that principled guidance leads us to engage in worse decision making because principled guidance is too rigid and it leads individuals to neglect or distort relevant details. However, when we examine empirical literature on the use of rules and principles in other (...) domains, we find that people can learn to use rules discriminately and that rule-based models tend to outperform even expert judgment. I argue that this evidence poses a problem for the moral particularist. If the particularist claims that we should not rely on decision-making rules when making practical decisions and it turns out that these rules help us make better decisions, then the particularists’ prescriptive account is deficient. However, if the particularist claims that we should rely on practical decision-making rules but not on moral rules, she needs to explain how practical rules are different from moral rules and why we should rely on the former but not the latter. (shrink)

Properties seem to play an important role in causal relations. But philosophers disagree over whether or not properties play their causal or nomic roles essentially. Causal essentialists say that they do, while quidditists deny it. This article surveys these two views, as well as views that try to find a middle ground.

External freedom is the central good protected in Kant's legal and political philosophy. But external freedom is perplexing, being at once freedom of spatio-temporal movement and a form of noumenal or 'intelligible' freedom. Moreover, it turns out that identifying impairments to external freedom nearly always involves recourse to an elaborated system of positive law, which seems to compromise external freedom's status as a prior, organizing good. Drawing heavily on Kant's understanding of the role of empirical 'anthropological' information in constructing a (...) Doctrine of Right, or Rechtslehre, this essay offers an interpretation of external freedom that makes sense of its simultaneous spatio-temporality, dependence on positive law, intelligibility (or 'noumenality'), and a priority. The essay suggests that this account of Kantian external freedom has implications both for politics and for the metaphysics of everyday objects and institutions. (shrink)

Alexander the Great and Egypt: History, Art, Tradition. Edited by Volker Grieb; Krzysztof Nawotka; and Agnieszka Wojciechowska. Philippika, vol. 74. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014. Pp. 458, illus. €83.

We examine whether analyst coverage influences corporate fraud in China. The fraud triangle specifies three main factors, i.e. opportunity, incentive, and rationalization. On the one hand, analysts may reduce the fraud opportunity factor through external monitoring aimed at discouraging managerial misconduct, which can moderate agency problems. On the other hand, analysts may increase the fraud incentive factor by pressurizing managers to achieve short-term performance targets, which can exacerbate agency problem. In either case, the potential influence of analysts on the fraud (...) rationalization factor may be more pronounced among firms that are more dependent on the capital market for corporate finance. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we show a negative association between corporate fraud propensity and analyst coverage, and that this effect is more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises, which are more reliant on the stock market for external funding. These findings suggest that analyst coverage contributes to corporate fraud deterrence in emerging economies characterized by weak investor protection. The main policy implication is that further development of the analyst profession in emerging economies may benefit investors and strengthen business ethics. (shrink)

(1996). A model for the critical review mode in TSI. World Futures: Vol. 47, Unity and Diversity in Contemporary Systems Tinking: Systematic Pictures at an Exhibition, pp. 37-52.

Public recognition of the fragility of the natural systems on which present and future generations depend has prompted calls for the practice of environmental stewardship —calls widely criticised in the environmental ethics literature. Some argue that stewardship 's historical associations entail that it is inherently sexist, speciesist and/or anthropocentric. Others argue that absent belief in a creator to appoint us as stewards and hold us accountable, talk of 'environmental stewardship ' is empty. I review the concept's recent evolution and provide (...) a tentative definition. I argue that so defined, it is not vulnerable to standard criticisms, but is instead a promising way of construing morally decent conduct towards the environment. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the different ways in which dream research can contribute to interdisciplinary consciousness research. As a second global state of consciousness aside from wakefulness, dreaming is an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness. However, programmatic suggestions for integrating dreaming into broader theories of consciousness, for instance by regarding dreams as a model system of standard or pathological wake states, have not yielded straightforward results. We review existing proposals for using dreaming as a model system, (...) taking into account concerns about the concept of modeling and the adequacy and practical feasibility of dreaming as a model system. We conclude that existing modeling approaches are premature and rely on controversial background assumptions. Instead, we suggest that contrastive analysis of dreaming and wakefulness presents a more promising strategy for integrating dreaming into a broader research context and solving many of the problems involved in the modeling approach. (shrink)

The new field of experimental philosophy has emerged as the methods of psychological science have been brought to bear on traditional philosophical issues. Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy will be the place to go to see outstanding new work in the field. It will feature papers by philosophers, papers by psychologists, and papers co-authored by people in both disciplines. The series heralds the emergence of a truly interdisciplinary field in which people from different disciplines are working together to address a (...) shared set of questions. The inaugural volume is roughly structured into four sections. The first three papers focus on recent developments in moral psychology, a topic that has seen lively debate and a great deal of progress over the last decade. The second section highlights three contributions that bring new methods to moral psychology: formal modeling and special populations. The third section brings together four papers that adopt an experimental philosophy approach to novel topics, including intuitive dualism, generics, joint action, and happiness. And the last two papers provide critical and historical context to the development of experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Here we use two filtered speech tasks to investigate children’s processing of slow (.

Since 1997 there has been a significant increase in the number and percentage of Kansas farmers who are women. Using Reskin and Roos’ model of “job queues and gender queues” I analyze changes in the agricultural industry in Kansas that resulted in more women becoming “principal farm operators” in the state. I find there are three changes largely responsible for women increasing their representation in the occupation: an increase in the demand for niche products, a decrease in the average farm (...) size, and greater societal acceptance of women as farmers. This study adds to the growing literature on women principal farm operators in developed countries, and is among the first to explore why women are becoming a larger percentage of the occupation in the United States. (shrink)

We use institutional-related theories and a unique natural experiment that enables an exogenous test of the influence of controlling shareholders on managerial accountability to corporate fraud. In China, prior to the Split Share Structure Reform, state shareholders held restricted shares that could not be traded. This restriction mitigated state-owned enterprise controlling shareholders’ incentives to monitor managers. The data examined show the SSSR strengthens incentives of state-owned enterprise controlling shareholders to replace fraudulent management. Our findings support the view that economic incentives (...) are important to promote corporate governance and deter fraud. (shrink)

James Frederick Ferrier developed his philosophy from a common sense background. However, his rejection of common sense philosophy in particular and Enlightenment philosophy in general results in the development of a system of idealism. In his series of lectures ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness - Parts I to VII’, which appeared in Blackwoods Magazine (1838–39), he outlines the problem with modern philosophy and argues that philosophy should follow a new direction. In his view, the most peculiar and interesting (...) aspect of humanity is consciousness. He contends that the attempt to develop a ‘science of man’ is impossible because it transforms a person into an object of study and thereby fails to capture the most distinctive aspect of humanity, namely, consciousness. According to Ferrier, philosophy should be an extension of consciousness itself; it is: ‘consciousness sublimed’. This paper will outline the central arguments in ‘An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness’ and show that an early example of British idealism was not only developed out of the common sense tradition but shares with common sense philosophy a focus on the immediate evidence of consciousness, placing the relationship between thought and world at the centre of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

Political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) calls for firms to implement and engage in deliberative democracy processes and structures, addressing governance gaps where governments are unwilling or unable to do so. However, an underlying assumption that the implementation of PCSR will enrich democratic processes in society has been exposed and challenged. In this conceptual article, we explore this challenge by developing a framework to reveal the dynamics of firms’ deliberative democratic processes and structures (meso level), and those at nation state (macro (...) level). Using existing cases as illustrative examples, we demonstrate that despite the public good premise of PCSR theory toward thickening the overall democracy in a society, corporate democratization at meso level can have the opposite effect and may actually erode macro-level democratic control of society and the economy. These findings imply a need for multilevel analysis in PCSR research and greater consideration of state-level public institutions and the responsibilities of business firms toward those institutions. Furthermore, we contribute to the PCSR literature by identifying the disruptive mechanisms associated with these dynamics and outline two alternative perspectives to allow firms to continue to take on political responsibilities. (shrink)

This book explores Hume's concern with the destructiveness of religious factions and his efforts to develop, in his moral philosophy, a solution to factional conflict. Sympathy and the related capacity to enter into foreign points of view are crucial to the neutralization of religious zeal and the naturalization of ethics. Jennifer Herdt suggests that Hume's preoccupation with religious faction is the key which reveals the unity of his varied philosophical, aesthetic, political and historical works.