In this study, we propose and test a model of the effects of organizational ethical culture and organizational architecture on the perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers. This study also examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture and moral acceptability judgment, hypothesizing that moral acceptability judgment is an important stage in the ethical decision-making process. Based on a field study in one of the largest financial institutions in Europe, we found that organizational ethical culture was significantly related to the (...) perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers and to the moral acceptability judgment of this type of unethical behavior. No support was found for the claim that features of organizational architecture are associated with the perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers. This is the first study to document the differential effects of organizational architecture and organizational ethical culture on perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers, in wholesale banking. Implications for managers and future research are discussed. (shrink)

Over the past two years, debate about the use of data taken from Nazi concentration camp experiments has intensified. Many survivors of the Holocaust have been particularly offended at the publication of hypothermia or other data. This article argues against the use of unethically obtained data, and considers the debate from the perspective of the rights of Holocaust victims.

Jewish German philosopher Ernst Cassirer was a leading proponent of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. The essays in this volume provide a window into Cassirer’s discovery of the symbolic nature of human existence—that our entire emotional and intellectual life is configured and formed through the originary expressive power of word and image, that it is in and through the symbolic cultural systems of language, art, myth, religion, science, and technology that human life realizes itself and attains not only its form, (...) its visibility, but also its reality. Thought and being are set in opposition and united in genuine correspondence by the symbolic strife between them that Cassirer calls _Auseinandersetzung,_ which determines the ethical relationship of the self to the other. (shrink)

The sequencing of the human genome and decreasing costs of sequencing technology have led to the notion of ‘personalized medicine’. This has been taken by some authors to indicate that personalized medicine will provide individualized treatments solely based on one’s DNA sequence. We argue this is overly optimistic and misconstrues the notion of personalization. Such interpretations fail to account for economic, policy and structural constraints on the delivery of healthcare. Furthermore, notions of individualization based on genomic data potentially take us (...) down the road of genetic reductionism obscuring the role of environmental factors in disease and ill health. We propose that one should see personalized medicine as a way of using personal genomic information to stratify individuals into subpopulations and suggest that personalized medicine be seen within a broader idea of personalized healthcare, reflecting healthcare that integrates personal genomic data into cultural, environmental and personal contexts. (shrink)

Includes an interview with the author, Svetlana Semenova.

Ancient allures the postmodern social subject trapped in the strangeness of time—the time after the end of history. For that time-beaten subject ancient is the unconscious of coherence, predictability, and certainty. Or perhaps that ancient is a glory fled. Whatsoever, ancient is generally sacralized—irrespective of the type of socialization that happened in the past—and journey to the ancient is often deemed to be a pilgrimage. When ideas of the ancient in their individuality and totality inter alia become the natural intellectual (...) resource for rebuilding postmodern societies, discriminative ingenuity becomes an essential faculty. Any uncritical reverence of the ancient becomes antithetical to modern social and political values, inviting the risk of reproducing inequities of the past. This article problematizes such uncritical dependence on the ancient using Ancient Indian Jurisprudence, which has been looked up on as a repository of moral and legal values, as a case in point. It meditates from the experiences and perspectives of an imaginary ‘teaching subject’ on the many pitfalls and possibilities of the ancient as it builds a framework of teaching and learning, and a representative scheme of evaluation for Ancient Indian Jurisprudence. (shrink)

This new translation of The Logic of the Cultural Sciences _ _makes Ernst Cassirer’s classic study, long out of print, available to English readers. A German Jew living in exile at the beginning of the Second World War, Cassirer wrote this book—one of his clearest and most concise—in response to the crises besetting his era. It represented to him a rethinking and completion of his magnum opus _The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. _S. G. Lofts’s translation stays close to the original (...) German and accurately reflects the echoes of the philosophical debates of Cassirer’s day. In the book’s five linked studies, Cassirer considers the intellectual structure of the disciplines we commonly refer to as the humanities. He defines and justifies the basic philosophical perspective of the philosophy of symbolic forms, and he contributes a wealth of ideas to continuing debates about culture and what is unique in human nature. (shrink)

S. G. Williams; VIII*—Belief, Desire, and the Praxis of Reasoning, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 90, Issue 1, 1 June 1990, Pages 119–142, http.

In the book, basic principles of syncretic logic (sycretics) are expounded upon, with the help of which group relationships of a philosophical nature are treated. Classical philosophical laws are analyzed, new assertions are formulated, laying claim to the position of laws. Syncretic logic is used for constructing the axiomatic theory of carriers and the analysis of its consequences. The problem of the origins of life is considered, the connection between the course of existence and the laws of conservation in physics (...) is expounded upon, the universal scheme of logical operations is described, the components of the structure of a world view are specified. The work is intended for a wide circle of individuals with philosophical and general scientific interests. (shrink)

Background: Doctor–patient sexual relationship is considered to be unfair because the first party would be abusing the second party’s vulnerability. The prohibition of this relationship is noted in the Hippocratic oath. Currently, a reprise of the use of oaths in medical schools can be observed.Aim: To determine whether the prohibition has been maintained and how its expression has varied in the oaths during different periods.Methods: 50 oaths were studied: 13 ancient–medieval and 37 modern–contemporary. Of the 50 texts, 19 were versions (...) of the original oaths. The oaths that pointed out the prohibited doctor–patient relationship referred to any sexual aspect or included paragraphs that began as the Hippocratic oath does were noted.Results: Of the 24 texts that expressed the prohibition, 8 were ancient–medieval and 16 were modern–contemporary. Some expressly call it Hippocratic oath, many use general terminology and others describe it in association with other commitments .Conclusions: The clause on the prohibition of the doctor–patient sexual relationship in Hippocratic oath was included to be for legal, economic and social reasons at the time. That the clause is found mostly in the ancient–medieval oaths can be attributed to the influence of the original. This commitment is generalised and associated with others by contemporary formulas. Currently, sexual relationships are the subject of legal and ethical analysis and their inclusion in the oaths is being debated. (shrink)

Although the effect of religious belief on morally relevant behavior is well demonstrated, the reverse influence is less known. In this research, we examined the influence of morality on religious belief. In the first study, we used two samples from Turkey and the United States, and specifically tested the hypothesis that intergroup tolerance predicts a shift in meta-ethical views toward subjective morality, which in turn predicts decreased religious belief. To examine the relationship between intergroup tolerance and religiosity via subjective morality, (...) a structural equation model (SEM) was run. SEM results yielded good fit to the data for both samples. Intergroup tolerance positively predicted subjective morality, and in turn, morality negatively predicted religiosity. The bias-corrected bootstrap analysis confirmed the mediation, indicating that the association between intergroup tolerance and religious belief was mediated via subjective morality. In Study 2, we probed for the causal relationship, and the results showed that manipulating intergroup tolerance increases subjective morality, but does not influence religiosity. Therefore, we found only partial evidence for our proposed model that tolerance causally influences subjective morality, but not religiosity. (shrink)

Since the publication of my critical edition in 1889 the Tristia of Ovid has received some attention. A paper in Hermathena, vol. vii. by Professor R. Ellis contains several conjectural emendations, and in a public lecture on The Second Book of Ovid's ‘Tristia’ , this veteran scholar analysed the intricate contents of Book II. Two learned pamphlets by Dr. R. Ehwald, Ad historiam carminum Ouidianorum recensionemque symbolae deal with the history of the text, and the textual criticism and interpretation generally. (...) Dr. Paul Vogel's Kritische und exegetische Bemerkungen zu Ovid ‘Tristien’ is a valuable contribution to the understanding of the text and its interpretation. (shrink)

In my previous article on the benzene problem, I described how Pauling's valence bond (resonance) theory, sometimes regarded as a modernized version of Kekule's oscillation hypothesis, came to be accepted by chemists by the end of World War II. But the alternative molecular orbital theory, proposed by Mulliken, had already been developed and was regarded as quantitatively superior by many quantum chemists, though it was not as easy to visualize and did not seem to harmonize as well with traditional chemical (...) concepts. During the 1950s and 1960s, thanks to the efforts of Charles Coulson and many other theorists, the molecular orbital approach not only dominated theoretical discussions but also started to be accepted by the chemical community as a whole and became the preferred description for benzene. Possible reasons were: its greater calculational convenience when applied to large molecules; better expository methods directed toward chemists; the spectacular success of the Woodward-Hoffmann rules for pericyclic reactions and Fukui's frontier orbital theory; and the development of a general theory of aromaticity, which predicted properties of similar molecules such as cyclobutadiene (C4H4). The relative importance of these reasons is explored through a mail survey of chemists. (shrink)

Volume 9 of the Routledge History of Philosophy surveys ten key topics in the philosophy of science, logic and mathematics in the twentieth century. Each of the essays is written by one of the world's leading experts in that field. Among the topics covered are the philosophy of logic, of mathematics and of Gottlob Frege; Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus ; a survey of logical positivism; the philosophy of physics and of science; probability theory, cybernetics and an essay on the mechanist/vitalist debates. (...) The volume also contains a helpful chronology to the major scientific and philosophical events in the twentieth century. It also provides an extensive glossary of technical terms in the notes on major figures in these fields. (shrink)