It is argued that the English bare plural (an NP with plural head that lacks a determiner), in spite of its apparently diverse possibilities of interpretation, is optimally represented in the grammar as a unified phenomenon. The chief distinction to be dealt with is that between the generic use of the bare plural (as in Dogs bark) and its existential or indefinite plural use (as in He threw oranges at Alice). The difference between these uses is not to be accounted (...) for by an ambiguity in the NP itself, but rather by explicating how the context of the sentence acts on the bare plural to give rise to this distinction. A brief analysis is sketched in which bare plurals are treated in all instances as proper names of kinds of things. A subsidiary argument is that the null determiner is not to be regarded as the plural of the indefinite article a. (shrink)

Whether or not the particular view of generic sentences articulated above is correct, it is quite clear that the study of generic terms and the truth-conditions of generic sentences touches on the representation of other parts of the grammar, as well as on how the world around us is reflected in language. I would hope that the problems mentioned above will highlight the relevance of semantic analysis to other apparently distinct questions, and focus attention on the relevance of linguistic problems (...) to other already established areas of inquiry. (shrink)

The stock market crash of 1987 had a profound effect on corporate Australia and the Australian community in general. The fall-out revealed that some of our most respected business figures had not been as ethical, or even as lawful, as we would have hoped. This impropriety produced in Australia an awakening to business ethics. Whilst many companies endeavoured to introduce ethical practices into their corporations, they perceived ethics as a way of minimising damage to the corporation and in some cases (...) as a means of competitive advantage. What was lost was the reason that one should embark on business ethics; and that is to make the society and corporate Australia a more ethical place in which to exist.This paper proposes a model based on 2 factors: commitment and partnerships, as a means of enabling corporate Australia to refocus attention on the main purpose of being inherently ethical in all that we do. This ethical model requires a commitment to partnerships with all stakeholders both internal and external in an attempt to enhance the level of ethical business practices that are contemplated and pursued within corporate Australia. Whilst the research agenda and the information collected is Australian-based, it is hoped that the ideas contained within this paper will have a wider appeal to corporations in similar cultural settings. (shrink)

This paper looks at the impact of the Business & Society Course on student's attitude towards and awareness of both ethical and illegal behavior. Business students were surveyed on the first and last day of the semesters on 11 ethical and legal scenarios. The population included three sections of the Business and Society course and three sections of other business courses as a control group. Though generalizability is limited, the courses show some potential to positively impact student's attitudes.Currently, ethics is (...) of great concern at business schools in this country. Accreditation standards of both the AACSB and ACBSP both require an ethical component to a business curriculum as a condition of accreditation. A majority of business schools at both the undergraduate and graduate level have required or at least elective courses in ethics. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 22-24.

Motivated by contemporary debates concerning whether directors inappropriately deploy corporate funds for corporate political donations and the limited research into managerial influence on corporate political donations, we examine the impact of director influences from a network perspective. Using a sample of large listed Australian corporations and their political party donation activity during 2000–2007, we find that both the professional and non-professional networks of directors influence corporate political donations. We observe these influences in relation to donations at the federal and state (...) levels, and with respect to the choice of recipient political parties. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to examine the ‘Code of Ethics Quality’ (CEQ) in the largest companies of Australia, Canada and the United States. For this purpose, a proposed CEQ construct has been applied. It appears from the empirical findings that while Australia, Canada and the United States are extremely similar in their economic and social development, there may well be distinct cultural mores and issues that are forming their business ethics practices. A research implication derived from the performed (...) research is that the construct provides a selection of observable and measurable elements in the context of CEQ. The construct of CEQ consists of nine measures divided into two dimensions (i.e. staff support and regulation). They should not be seen as a complete list. On the contrary, it is encouraged that others propose and elaborate revisions and extensions. A practical implication of this paper is a structure of what and how to examine the CEQ in a managerial setting. It may assist companies in their efforts to establish, maintain and improve their ethical culture, norms and beliefs within the organization and supporting them in their ethical business practices with different stakeholders in the marketplace and society. The dimensions and measures of the construct may be used as a frame of reference for further research. They may be useful and applicable across contexts and over time using similar samples when it comes to large companies, as small‐ or medium‐sized ones may not have considered all areas nor have the elements in place. This is a research limitation, but it provides an opportunity for further research. (shrink)

This paper applies concepts Deleuze developed in his ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, especially those relating to modulatory power, dividuation and control, to aspects of Australian schooling to explore how this transition is manifesting itself. Two modulatory machines of assessment, NAPLAN and My Schools, are examined as a means to better understand how the disciplinary institution is changing as a result of modulation. This transition from discipline to modulation is visible in the declining importance of the disciplinary teacher–student relationship (...) as a measure of the success of the educative process. The transition occurs through seduction because that which purports to measure classroom quality is in fact a serpent of modulation that produces simulacra of the disciplinary classroom. The effect is to sever what happens in the disciplinary space from its representations in a luminiferous ether that overlays the classroom. (shrink)

David Chalmers argues that consciousness -- authentic, first-person, conscious consciousness -- cannot be reduced to brain events or to any physical event, and that efforts to find a workable mind-body identity theory are, therefore, doomed in principle. But for Chalmers and non-reductionist in general consciousness consists exclusively, or at least paradigmatically, of phenomenal or qualia-consciousness. This results in a seriously inadequate understanding both of consciousness and of the “hard problem.” I describe other, higher-order cognitional events which must be conscious if (...) the “hard problem” is to be solved -- in any sense of ‘solve’ which would make us any the wiser about it -- but whose consciousness is quite different from the qualia and phenomena usually inventoried. Events of this kind are both part of the hard problem and the means by which we will solve it, if we ever do. (shrink)

This paper examines the contents of the codes of ethics of 83 of the top 500 companies operating in the private sector in Australia in an attempt to discover whether there are national characteristics that differentiate the codes used by companies operating in Australia from codes used by companies operating in the American and Canadian systems. The studies that were used as a comparison were Mathews (1987) for the United States of America and Lefebvre and Singh (1992) for Canada. The (...) major conclusion is that, whilst Australian codes do have some characteristics that differentiate them from the other two groups, it appears that companies in all three cultures are driven by the same motives to develop codes. (shrink)

There are three main types of number used in modern, industrialized societies. Cardinals count sets (e.g., people, objects) and quantify elements of conventional scales (e.g., money, distance), ordinals index positions in ordered sequences (e.g., years, pages), and nominals serve as unique identifiers (e.g., telephone numbers, player numbers). Many studies that have cited number frequencies in support of claims about numerical cognition and mathematical cognition hinge on the assumption that most numbers analyzed are cardinal. This paper is the first to investigate (...) the relative frequencies of different number types, presenting a corpus analysis of morphologically unmarked numbers (not, e.g., “eighth” or “21st”) in which we manually annotated 3,600 concordances in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Overall, cardinals are dominant—both pure cardinals (sets) and measurements (scales)—except in the range 1,000–10,000, which is dominated by ordinal years, like 1996 and 2004. Ordinals occur less often overall, and nominals even less so. Only for cardinals do round numbers, associated with approximation, dominate overall and increase with magnitude. In comparison with other registers, academic writing contains a lower proportion of measurements as well as a higher proportion of ordinals and, to some extent, nominals. In writing, pure cardinals and measurements are usually represented as number words, but measurements—especially larger, unround ones—are more likely to be numerals. Ordinals and nominals are mostly represented as numerals. Altogether, this paper reveals how numbers are used in American English, establishing an initial baseline for any analyses of number frequencies and shedding new light on the cognitive and psychological study of number. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Titles, Labels, and Names:A House of MirrorsGreg Petersen (bio)An EducationAmong the harshest critiques ever received during my doctoral coursework came from a professor who was noticeably perturbed that I had researched and written a paper on an artwork without considering the title in the interpretation and analysis of the work. The professor insisted that the title is necessary to understand the piece. As a diligent student, the lesson was (...) learned, and the following semester I wrote a different paper for a different professor including the title as part of the interpretation and analysis. The professor's response asserted that the sections of the paper discussing the title should be deleted to improve the paper because a title is a name only—a linguistic referent to speak and write about the work that has no other relationship to the work. The discussions that followed with the two professors evolved into a permanent interest in the relationship between appellations and the works they represent. The debate of whether titles are or are not important is not a two-sided argument but rather a maze. This article is not a specialized theoretical argument but an explication of this maze of disjointed relationships among images, their appellations, and the theories espoused by various artists, art critics, art historians, and philosophers. Nevertheless, the clearest exits from the maze are found by treating the appellations as literature and applying literary theory to them.Between Text and ImageMuch of the world we live in is visual and linguistic in nature: visual to the extent that seeing is associated with knowing, and linguistic to the extent that we can communicate through the use of words and letters. For thousands [End Page 29] of years there has been a close relationship between images and language. Both are commonly represented through the use of pigments on a two-dimensional surface. While we know of no literary relationships in early paintings, it is extremely rare today to find paintings without a literary appellation attached. Today we study paintings through words, but only on the most elementary levels do we study words through paintings. It appears that literate cultures give dominance to textual symbols over those in paintings, while illiterate cultures reverse these relationships. The problem is that words have culturally agreed upon meanings, often more so than visual images. We read and listen and then write and speak about those things we have read and heard. Historically, it may be that the relationship between language and images has reversed itself, and perhaps even reverses itself in our own educational process as we begin teaching children letters and words through the use of pictures. After all, which came first: image or language?There has been little written on the use of word associations with iconographic images during the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, it is clear that identification characteristics other than linguistic ones existed. Hazard Adams is one of the few to raise this issue in his essay on titles: "Before I turn to literary titles it might be well to ask whether... I am correct in assuming that there has never been a nonverbal title of a literary work or of anything else for that matter, the word-objects relation of a title being irreversible. There are certainly nonverbal labels like coats of arms and crowns that imply title in a related sense."1 It may be true that titles are typically thought of as word associations identifying objects, but it may also be possible that medieval imagery was at least as communicatively accurate as our present textual system. For example, a man with arrows fixed in his flesh would still be recognized by a medieval illiterate as St. Sebastian, yet most of the depictions of this Catholic saint are simply titled St. Sebastian. Would hanging the text St. Sebastian next to these depictions have created more meaning or a deeper understanding to a medieval Catholic? Often sacred personages and other important visual images have their own identifying characteristics that make a correlative text unnecessary. These identifying characteristics, to those familiar with them, remain very effective nonverbal symbols that conjure the stories they represent.Furthermore, during the medieval... (shrink)

Jerry Walls has attempted to make the case that no orthodox Christian should embrace compatibilism. We responded to his arguments, challenging four key premises. In his most recent response, Walls argues that none of our rebuttals to these premises succeed. Here we clarify aspects of our previous arguments and show that Walls has not in fact undermined our defense of Christian compatibilism.

There has been recently a substantial rise of relativism in the epistemology of social science. It has seriously discredited normative function of the epistemology and changed the context of epistemological discussion. Some hold that the problem of relativism cannot be solved by scientific means, because it ultimately depends on personal beliefs. However, present paper shows that there are different scientific strategies of coping with relativism. The key argument is that the epistemological stance towards relativism is closely related to the conceptualization (...) of sense in general social theory. Some prominent examples of socialtheorizing are presented to support this point and demonstrate that different conceptualizations of sense are possible, and that these are connected to the approach to social-scientific cognition. Relationship between epistemological grounds and conceptualization of sense in work of Scheler, Weber, Bourdieu, Luhmann is briefly analyzed. The conclusion is drawn that future exploration of epistemological problems in social sciences may benefit from rethinking and refining the concept of sense. (shrink)

considerable publicity in some of the leading general science journals such as Science and Nature. While most of this research has appeared in physics journals, some has appeared in economics journals as well, more often when at least one author is an economist. Strong claims have been made by some advocates regarding its reputed superiority to economics (McCauley, 2004), with arguments that in fact the teaching of microeconomics and macroeconomics as they are currently constituted should cease and be replaced by (...) appropriate courses in mathematics, physics, and some other harder sciences. The lack of invariance principles in economics and the failure of economists to deal properly with certain empirical regularities are held against it in this line of argument, although most econophysicists do not go as far as McCauley in proposing the complete replacement of economics as such by econophysics. (shrink)

“When demand and supply are in stable equilibrium, if any accident should move the scale of production from its equilibrium position, there will be instantly brought into play forces tending to push it back to that position; just as if a stone hanging by a string is displaced from its equilibrium position… But in real life such oscillations are seldom as rhythmical as those of a stone hanging freely from a string; the comparison would be more exact if the string (...) were supposed to hang in the troubled waters of a mill-race, whose stream was at one time allowed to flow freely and at another partially cut off. Nor are these complexities sufficient to illustrate all the disturbances with which the economist and the merchant alike are forced to concern themselves. (shrink)

We examine the “new comparative economics” as proposed by Djankov et al. (2003) and their use of the concept of an institutional possibilities frontier. While we agree with their general argument that one must consider a variety of institutions and their respective social costs, including legal systems and cultural characteristics, when comparing the performance of different economic systems, we find various complications and difficulties with the framework they propose. We propose that a broader study of clusters of institutions and such (...) newly emerging forms as the new traditional economy may be better suited as ways to approach the study of comparative economics in the era after the breakdown of the old comparison of market capitalism and command socialism that came to an end with the breakup of the Soviet Union. (shrink)

We present three arguments regarding the limits to rationality, prediction, and control in economics, based on Morgenstern’s analysis of the Holmes-Moriarty problem. The first uses a standard metamathematical theorem on computability to indicate logical limits to forecasting the future. The second provides possible nonconvergence for Bayesian forecasting in infinite dimensional space. The third shows the impossibility of a computer perfectly forecasting an economy with agents knowing its forecasting program. Thus, economic order is partly the product of something other than calculative (...) rationality. The joint presentation of these existing results should introduce the reader to implications of these concepts for certain shared concerns of Keynes and Hayek. (shrink)

James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USA Tel: 001-540-568-3212 Fax: 001-540-568-3010 Email: [email protected]..

“A Public Domain, once a velvet carpet of rich buffalo-grass and grama, now an illimitable waste of rattlesnake-bush and tumbleweed, too impoverished to be accepted as a gift by the states within which it lies. Why? Because the ecology of the Southwest happened to be set on a hair trigger.”.

This paper presents a view of the process of transition from planned command socialism to mixed market capitalism involving nonlinear complex dynamical phenomena. After the former institutional structure disappears a coordination failure can bring about macroeconomic collapse as in almost all of the former Soviet bloc or macroeconomic boom as in China. A closely linked phenomenon is the rise of the underground economy as inflation and income inequality increase. This can lead to a jump from one equilibrium to a very (...) different one as nonlinear social feedback processes operate in the transition. (shrink)

“The ‘fallacy of composition’ that drives a felicitous wedge between micro and macro, between the individual and the aggregate, and gives rise to emergent phenomena in economics, non-algorithmic ways – as conjectured originally by John Stuart Mill…, George Herbert Lewes … , and codified by Lloyd Morgan … in his popular Gifford Lectures - may yet be tamed by unconventional models of computation.” --K. Vela Velupillai (2008, p. 21).

Large increases unofficial economies in many transition economies arise from a dynamic interaction with rising income inequality and public sector changes in multiple equilibria system. Returns to unofficial activity are first increasing and then decreasing, implying two distinct stable equilibria, with changes in inequality possibly causing a jump from one to the other. Multiple regressions of data from 18 transition economies find income inequality significantly correlated with the size of the unofficial economy, with the maximum annual rate of inflation also (...) significantly correlated. The latter appears to be the only significant correlate with the increase in the size of the unofficial economy. (shrink)

Substantially increased international financial mobility and internal financial reforms in many countries have led to apparently increased volatility of their financial markets. This heightened volatility has sometimes been associated with rapid increases or decreases in asset values that many observers suspect contain elements of speculative bubbles and their associated crashes, not justified by rational expectations of underlying fundamentals. In addition, these possible bubbles may coincide with nonlinear dynamics beyond basic ARCH effects, thus being nonlinear speculative bubbles.

The most important fact about 21st century economics is that it is the post-neoclassical era in terms of the frontiers of economic research. One can still find orthodox, neoclassical theory in most textbooks, especially those at the upper undergraduate level. However, this no longer reflects the reality of how economists at the cutting edge of economics are thinking, including those who are in the mainstream of the profession. The intellectual orthodoxy of neoclassicism has died (Colander, 2000) and the current thrust (...) of research at the cutting edge of the frontier is the search for the appropriate alternative to replace it. (shrink)

The implications for how teach macroeconomics at the undergraduate level of the emergence of the multidisciplinary study of nonlinear complex dynamics are examined. A definition of complex dynamics is presented and a broad review of various applications in macroeconomics is made. Some particular implications are emphasized such as how complex dynamics raise serious doubts about the rational expectations assumption. Several models and approaches are suggested that can be used to make these ideas accessble to students.

For transition economies, income inequality is positively correlated with the share of output produced in the informal economy. Increases in income inequality also tend to be correlated with increases in the share of output produced in the unofficial economy. These hypotheses are supported significantly by empirical data for sixteen transition economies between 1987 to 1989 and 1993 to 1994. Various causal mechanisms may operate in both directions, an increasingly large informal economy causing more inequality due to falling tax revenues and (...) weakened social safety nets, and increasing inequality causing more informal activity as social solidarity and trust decline. (shrink)

Nobody has died yet as a result of the ongoing trials for transferring money internationally without a license of four Harrisonburg men from Kurdish parts of Iraq: Rashid Qambari, Ahmed Abdullah, Amir Rashid, and Fadhil Noroly. However, before coming here they were threatened because of their work for groups associated with the United States, and they were brought here by the United States government as part of Operation Pacific Haven. Saddam Hussein killed members of local Kurdish families. Qambari, convicted on (...) January 30, 2006, has stated, “If I get deported back to Iraq, I will be a nice gift to the insurgents. I will be dead.” Deportation is a possible outcome of his conviction. (shrink)

James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USA tel: 540-568-3212 fax: 540-568-3010 email: [email protected]..

How large the non-observed economy (NOE) is and what determines its size in different countries and regions of the world is a question that has been and continues to be much studied by many observers (Schneider and Enste, 2000, 2002).[1] The size of this sector in an economy has important ramifications. One is that it negatively affects the ability of a nation to collect taxes to support its public sector. The inability to provide public services can in turn lead more (...) economic agents to move into the non-observed sector (Johnson, Kaufmann, and Shleifer, 1997). When such a sector is associated with criminal or corrupt activities it may undermine social capital and broader social cohesion (Putnam, 1993), which in turn may damage economic growth (Knack and Keefer, 1997; Zak and Knack, 2001). Furthermore, as international aid programs are tied to official measures of the size of economies, these can be distorted by wide variations in the relative sizes of the NOE across different countries, especially among the developing economies. (shrink)

abstract Cowen and I agree that rational‐expectations theory is unrealistic and that risk is difficult to quantify. However, we continue to disagree about the riskiness of consumption as opposed to investment. Since more investment might lead to a recession if investment is relatively risky, Cowen's use of rational‐expectations theory to buttress the Austrian school's claim that market economies can shift toward relatively more investment without experiencing macroeconomic disruption remains suspect.

Since modern medicine is based substantially in clinical medical research, the flaws and ethical problems that arise in this research as it is conceived and practiced in the United States are likely to be reflected to some extent in current medicine and its practice. This paper explores some of the ways in which clinical research has suffered from an androcentric focus in its choice and definition of problems studied, approaches and methods used in design and interpretation of experiments, and theories (...) and conclusions drawn from the research. Some examples of re-visioned research hint at solutions to the ethical dilemmas created by this biased focus; an increased number of feminists involved in clinical research may provide avenues for additional changes that would lead to improved health care for all. (shrink)

Ecologic-economic systems tend to exhibit greater complexity than systems that are purely ecological or economic. The interactions between the two types often generates nonlinear relations that lead to various kinds of complex dynamics that complicate management and decisionmaking regarding them. Of these, forests have characteristics that lead them to have special problems not usually encountered in the management of such systems. A central one is the long time periods involved managing forests compared to most other such systems. This means that (...) the issues regarding determination of discount rates for valuing future outcomes are more important for forestry management than for many other systems. Also, forests generate a wider range of externalities than do most other ecologic-economic systems, with implications for various hierarchical levels of management. This paper considers the array of these problems as they appear for a variety of forestry management issues. (shrink)

This paper argues that a new economic system is emerging in the world economy, that of the new traditional economy. Such an economic system simultaneously seeks to have economic decision making embedded within a traditional socio-cultural framework, most frequently one associated with a traditional religion, while at the same time seeking to use modern technology and to be integrated into the modern world economy to some degree. The efforts to achieve such a system are reviewed in various parts of the (...) world, with greater analysis of the Islamic and neo- Confucian economic systems. (shrink)

E. Roy Weintraub’s How Economics Became a Mathematical Science (2002) presents a original, distinctive, and provocative perspective on the evolution of mathematical economics from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Its originality and distinctiveness and provocativeness extends as well to its view of the relationship between mathematics and economics. He reveals many little known facts and punctures many fallacious, if widespread ideas. At the same time, he ultimately leaves us hanging on certain crucial points with an ambivalence (...) that is never resolved. However, he is careful not to claim too much for his work: it is not the definitive history of mathematical economics nor does it claim to provide ultimate answers. (shrink)