Ten countries have established quotas for female representation on publicly traded corporate and/or state-owned enterprise boards of directors, ranging from 33 to 50 %, with various sanctions. Fifteen other countries have introduced non-binding gender quotas in their corporate governance codes enforcing a “comply or explain” principle. Countless other countries’ leaders and policy groups are in the process of debating, developing, and approving legislation around gender quotas in boards. Taken together, gender quota legislation significantly impacts the composition of boards of directors (...) and thus the strategic direction of these publicly traded and state-owned enterprises. This article outlines an integrated model of three institutional factors that explain the establishment of board of directors gender quota legislation based on the premise that the country’s institutional environment co-evolves with gender corporate policies. We argue that these three key institutional factors are female labor market and gendered welfare state provisions, left-leaning political government coalitions, and path-dependent policy initiatives for gender equality, both in the public realm as well as in the corporate domain. We discuss implications of our conceptual model and empirical findings for theory, practice, policy, and future research. These include the adoption and penalty design of board diversity practices into corporate practices, bottom-up approaches from firm to country-level gender board initiatives, hard versus soft regulation, the leading role of Norway and its isomorphic effects, the likelihood of engaging in decoupling, the role of business leaders, and the transnational and international reaction to board diversity initiatives. (shrink)

Groff defends 'realism about causality' through close discussions of Kant, Hilary Putnam, Brian Ellis and Charles Taylor, among others. In so doing she affirms critical realism, but with several important qualifications. In particular, she rejects the theory of truth advanced by Roy Bhaskar. She also attempts to both clarify and correct earlier critical realist attempts to apply realism about causality to the social sciences. By connecting issues in metaphysics and philosophy of science to the problem of relativism, Groff bridges the (...) gap between the philosophical literature and broader debates surrounding socio-political theory and poststructuralist thought. This unique approach will make the book of interest to philosophers and socio-political theorists alike. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which postdoctoral life scientists engage in supervision work in academic institutions in Austria. Reward systems and career conditions in academic institutions in most European and other OECD countries have changed significantly during the last two decades. While an increasing focus is put on evaluating research performances, little reward is attached to excellent performances in mentoring and advising students. Postdoctoral scientists mostly inhabit fragile institutional positions and experience harsh competition, as the number of available senior (...) positions is small compared to that of young scientists striving for an academic career. To prevail in this competition, publications and mobility are key. Educational work is rarely rewarded. Nevertheless, postdocs play a key role in educating PhD students, as overburdened senior scientists often pass on practical supervision duties to their postdoctoral fellows. This paper shows how under these conditions, postdocs reframe the students they supervise as potential resources for co-authored publications. What might look like a mutually beneficial solution at a first glance, in practice implies the subordination of the values of education to the logic of production, which marginalizes spaces primarily devoted to education. The author argues that conflicts like this are indicative of broader changes in the cultural norms of science and academic citizenship, rendering community-oriented tasks such as education work less attractive to academic scientists. Since education and supervision work are central cornerstones of any functioning higher education and research system, this could have negative repercussions for the long-term development of academic institutions. (shrink)

A new political movement has arisen in bioethics, self‐consciously distingushed from the rest of the ield and characterized by a new way of writing and arguing. Unfortunately, that new method is mean‐spirited, mystical, and emotional. It claims insight into ultimate truth yet disavows reason.

Ontology. Revisited. Groff's argument cuts against a familiar anti-metaphysical grain. Social and political philosophy, she maintains, is not as metaphysically neutral as it may seem. Even the most deontological of theories connects up with a ...

Readers of this book are sure to view the ethics of incentives in a new light.

Volume 27, Issue 4, July 2019, Page 673-683.

Talk of powers is muddled. Building upon Powers and capacities in philosophy: The new aristotelianism, Routledge, London, 2012a, pp 207–227), I disambiguate four senses of the term: powers construed as activity, as capacity/potentiality, as essence and as necessity, respectively, in an attempt to clarify what it is that realists about causal powers take themselves to be realists about.

This is a response to Christie, Brusse, et al., ‘Are biological traits explained by their “selected effect” functions?’ The interest of their paper is that it draws our attention to those cases in which changes in a population that are brought about by natural selection in turn bring about changes in the environment that alter the selectionist pressures that were responsible for the original changes. Much of the paper, however, is an argument that the notion of a ‘proper function’ introduced (...) in my Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories (LTOBC), exhibits deep misunderstandings about the actual workings of natural selection. Very little that they say about ‘proper functions’ and related notions from LTOBC is correct, however. I will not list the errors but I will try to make my uses of ‘proper function’ and certain related terms clearer. (shrink)

ABSTRACTComparative effectiveness studies, referred to here as “usual-care” trials, seek to compare current medical practices for the same medical condition. Such studies are presumed to be safe and involve only minimal risks. However, that presumption may be flawed if the trial design contains “unusual” care, resulting in potential risks to subjects and inaccurately informed consent. Three case studies described here did not rely on clinical evidence to ascertain contemporaneous practice. As a result, the investigators drew inaccurate conclusions, misinformed research participants, (...) and subjects’ safety was compromised. Before approving usual-care protocols, IRBs and scientific review committees should evaluate the quality and completeness of information documenting usual-care practices. Guidance from governmental oversight agencies regarding evidence-based documentation of current clinical practice could prevent similar occurrences in future usual-care trials. Accurate information is necessary to ensure that trials comply with government regulations that require minimizing research risks to subjects and accurate informed consent documents. (shrink)

If stem cell-based therapies are developed, we will likely confront a difficult problem of justice: for biological reasons alone, the new therapies might benefit only a limited range of patients. In fact, they might benefit primarily white Americans, thereby exacerbating long-standing differences in health and health care.

Four questions are raised about the semantics of Quantified Modal Logic. Does QML admit possible objects, i.e. possibilia? Is it plausible to admit them? Can sense be made of such objects? Is QML committed to the existence of possibilia? The conclusions are that QML, generalized as in Kripke, would seem to accommodate possibilia, but they are rejected on philosophical and semantical grounds. Things must be encounterable, directly nameable and a part of the actual order before they may plausibly enter into (...) the identity relation. QML is not committed to possibilia in that the range of variables may be restricted to actual objects. Support of the conclusions requires some discussion of substitution puzzles; also, the semantical distinction between proper names which are directly referring, and descriptions even where the latter are "rigid designators". Views of W.V. Quine, B. Russell, K. Donnellan, D. Kaplan as well as S. Kripke are invoked or evaluated in conjunction with these issues. (shrink)

Ancient philosophical theories of soul are in many respects sensitive to ways of speaking and thinking about the soul psuchê] that are not specifically philosophical or theoretical. We therefore begin with what the word ‘soul’ meant to speakers of Classical Greek, and what it would have been natural to think about and associate with the soul. We then turn to various Presocratic thinkers, and to the philosophical theories that are our primary concern, those of Plato (first in the Phaedo, then (...) in the Republic), Aristotle (in the De Anima or On the Soul ), Epicurus, and the Stoics. These are by far the most carefully worked out theories of soul in ancient philosophy. Later theoretical developments — for instance, in the writings of Plotinus and other Platonists, as well as the Church Fathers — are best studied against the background of the classical theories, from which, in large part, they derive. (shrink)

‘According to informational semantics, if it's necessary that a creature can't distinguish Xs from Ys, it follows that the creature can't have a concept that applies to Xs but not Ys.’ There is, indeed, a form of informational semantics that has this verificationist implication. The original definition of information given in Dretske'sKnowledge and the Flow of Information, when employed as a base for a theory of intentional representation or ‘content,’ has this implication. I will argue that, in fact, most of (...) what an animal needs to know about its environment is not available as natural information of this kind. It is true, I believe, that there is one fundamental kind of perception that depends on this kind of natural information, but more sophisticated forms of inner representation do not. It is unclear, however, exactly what ‘natural information’ is supposed to mean, certainly in Fodor's, and even in Dretske's writing. In many places, Dretske seems to employ a softer notion than the one he originally defines. I will propose a softer view of natural information that is, I believe, at least hinted at by Dretske, and show that it does not have verificationist consequences. According to this soft informational semantics, a creature can perfectly well have a representation of Xs without being able to discriminate Xs from Ys. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Fast forward 50 years into the future. A look back at what occurred in the field of bioethics since 2010 reveals that a conference in 2050 commemorated the death of bioethics. In a steady progression over the years, the field became increasingly fragmented and bureaucratized. Disagreement and dissension were rife, and this once flourishing, multidisciplinary field began to splinter in multiple ways. Prominent journals folded, one by one, and were replaced with specialized publications dealing with genethics, reproethics, nanoethics, and (...) necroethics. Mainstream bioethics organizations also collapsed, giving way to new associations along disciplinary and sub‐disciplinary lines. Physicians established their own journals, and specialty groups broke away from more general associations of medical ethics. Lawyers also split into three separate factions, and philosophers rejected all but the most rigorous, analytic articles into their newly established journal. Matters finally came to a head with global warming, the world‐wide spread of malaria and dengue, and the cost of medical treatments out of reach for almost everyone. The result was the need to develop plans for strict rationing of medical care. At the same time, recognition emerged of the importance of the right to health and the need for global justice in health. By 2060, a spark of hope was ignited, opening the door to the resuscitation of bioethics and involvement of the global community. (shrink)

1 This book is the product of a one-year project conducted by the Hastings Center, Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, during 1976-1977. The Behavior Control Research Group-an ongoing, interdisciplinary working group com posed of philosophers, psychiatrists, psychologists, social sci entists, and lawyers-met four times over the course of the year with special consultants with expertise in the field of mental retardation. At those meetings, participants gave in formal presentations, which were followed by group discus sion. As the (...) project progressed, formal papers were delivered and subjected to further critical commentary. This volume, in two related parts, represents the deliberations of the group as a whole, and then offers individual papers prepared by some scholars in order to give a sense of the kind of specific arguments on which the general conclusions were based. We undertook the project to examine: (1) questions of competence and consent; and (2) the practical implications, lThe project, entitled "Ethical Issues in the Care and Treatment of the Mildly Mentally Retarded," was supported by the EVI5T program of the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 05576-14793. Any Opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. ix x PREFACE in terms of care and treatment, that evolve from differing definitions and models applied to mental retardation. (shrink)

Too much contemporary bioethical discourse is weak on science, lazily citing and adopting science fiction scenarios rather than science facts in the framing of analyses and policies. We challenge bioethicists to take more seriously the role of providing informed insight into and oversight over contemporary science and its implications and applications. Bioethicists must work harder to understand the fast-changing truths and limits of basic science, and they must incorporate only appropriate and authentic science into their discourse, just as they did (...) in the past when addressing the quandaries of clinical medicine. The field of bioethics is not so old and entrenched that its future is assured. Bioethicists must make themselves useful to society in order to deserve and retain the public's trust. They can best do this by ensuring that decision making and public policy are grounded in facts, not fictions and fantasies. (shrink)

On a hot sleepy summer day an old truck rattles along a dusty road. A turnip falls off the truck, the truck does not stop. Perhaps the old man who drives the truck does not know that the turnip fell off, or perhaps he does not care. He values his time or his ease more than he values the I turnip. We, who know not only that turnips are nourishing but that many people go hungry, may say that the man (...) ought to have stopped to pick up the turnip. (shrink)

This article presents the ethnographically driven multi-method research perspective of vernacular religion and analyses its potential to contribute to the theoretical advancement of Jewish studies. The ongoing discussion on religion and change within the study of religions in gen­eral and Jewish studies in particular is outlined and structured around three ‘turns’ identified in the re­search on vernacular religiosity. To exemplify these theoretical and methodological considerations, a recently initiated research project focusing on vernacular Judaism in Finland is presented. This project seeks (...) to examine central ideas of boundaries as they are negotiated and interpreted among Finnish Jewry, to compare the emerging patterns with Nordic counterparts and thus contribute to a more nuanced perception of Jewish identities in these contexts. The article concludes with a discussion on the advances of such an approach, pointing to the relative novelty of research into vernacular religion within Jewish studies and the exceptionality of the Finnish Jewish context. (shrink)

_Aesthetic Order_ challenges contemporary theories of aesthetics, offering the idea of beauty as quantitative yet different from the traditional discursive order. It will be of importance to all interested in aesthetic theory.

Everyday artistic creativity is downplayed in our schools, our lives, our culture. Yet here is an essential language of our lives, opening us to important ways of knowing, truth, beauty, and means for creative coping, as individuals and as cultures. Views of John Dewey and Suzanne Langer are each considered. A devaluation of artistic creativity may also reflect unacknowledged biases related to emotional "versus" intellectual knowing, gender stereotyping, science "versus" art, individualism "versus" interdependence, false stereotypes of creative "unhealth," and eminent (...) "versus" everyday creativity. Addressing these holds promise for our personal well-being and development, and our greater health as cultures. (shrink)