The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 requires audit committees of public companies’ boards of directors to install an anonymous reporting channel to assist in deterring and detecting accounting fraud and control weaknesses. While it is generally accepted that the availability of such a reporting channel may reduce the reporting cost of the observer of a questionable act, there is concern that the addition of such a channel may decrease the overall effectiveness compared to a system employing only non-anonymous reporting options. The (...) rationale underlying this concern involves the would-be reporter’s likelihood of reporting, the seriousness with which the organization treats an anonymous report, and the organization’s ability to thoroughly follow-up the report. Thus, we explore the extent to which the availability of an anonymous reporting channel influences intended use of non-anonymous reporting channels. Further, in response to Sarbanes–Oxley and the environment of financial scandals that led to its passage, many firms are strengthening their internal audit departments, and providing them with greater independence from upper management’s direct control. Accordingly, our examination tests whether the intended use of the internal audit department as an internal reporting channel is greater when the internal audit department is of “high” versus “low” quality. Finally, the study investigates intended reporting behavior across three different cases (e.g., settings). Results show that the existence of an anonymous channel does reduce the likelihood of reporting to non-anonymous channels, that generally the internal audit department quality does not affect reporting to non-anonymous channels, and that case-setting affects the type of channel to be used. Implications from the study are discussed. (shrink)

Within the Platonic (or Neoplatonic) dualistic conception of body and soul the difference between maleness and femaleness might appear to be a difference which only concerns the body, that is a difference which is not essential for determining who (or what) a certain human is. One might argue that, since humans are essentially their souls and souls are genderless, men and women are essentially equal. As my paper shows, though, Plato's and Proclus’ writings set out two ways of conceptualizing human (...) souls themselves as ‘sexed’ and of doing this in a way that female souls are determined to be inferior to male souls. By Plato's account, souls are indeed genderless in terms of their essence, but they attain maleness through virtuous and femaleness through vicious activities. Proclus, by contrast, conceptualizes souls as essentially ‘male’ or ‘female’. A soul in whose essence the Different predominates is female, while a soul in whose substance the Same predominates is male. And since the attainment and preservation of virtue depend on the strength of the Same, female souls are not vicious by Proclus’ account, but they bear a higher risk of becoming vicious. (shrink)

Current perspectives on attractiveness-related prosocial biases emphasize the contribution of evolutionarily shaped mating drives. Here, we extend these concepts by highlighting the pivotal role of the hypothalamic peptide oxytocin in augmenting the salience and rewarding value of social stimuli, including the partner's face, thereby fostering social bonding in general and the stability of monogamous pair bonds and offspring care in particular.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 7, Page 32-33, July 2012.

In his commentary on Plato’s Parmenides Proclos describes the maternal and paternal contributions to reproduction as of equal value: The paternal seed furnishes potential λόγοι, the mother actualises them and so causes the reversion of the offspring. However, the definition of the mother as actualising cause is linked to the particular circumstances of conception in the sphere of nature. In general, Proclus bases his concept of femininity on the idea of a shared, but not equal activity by paternal and maternal (...) causes. In the metaphysical sphere the maternal cause is distinguished by its inspiring activity, that is, it provokes the procession of powers that are permanently anchored in the father and so it enables the begetting of the offspring as an entity separate from the father. This activity involves a loss of perfection, which is the basis for a difference in value between the activities of the maternal and paternal causes. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that those who embrace animal rights should also embrace primitivism—the view that humans should abandon modern technology and take up something like hunter-gatherer technology instead. I call my view “animal-rights primitivism” to distinguish it from human-centered arguments for primitivism. In particular, I employ a vital-needs framework to make my argument. I argue that hunter-gatherer technology is the least harmful kind of technology, it is sufficient to meet human vital needs, and it is possible for humans (...) to make the transition to hunter-gatherer technology while still meeting their vital needs. Alternatively, I argue that even if humans cannot make the transition while still meeting their vital needs, they are responsible for putting themselves in that situation and therefore forfeit the right to aggress against other sentient species to do so. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:160 BOOK REVIEWS ary. The latter dispose toward {mediate) and help in the expression of (pertain to the use of) the grace of the Spirit. In professing the priority of the Spirit, The Reshaping of Catholicism could hardly be in greater agreement with the Summa theologiae. This theme in Dulles suggests how Aquinas can be linked to ecclesial renewal: Aquinas's thought on the New Law can assist the Church (...) in continually re-acquiring its own divinely given internal order. FR. THOMAS HUGHSON, S.J. Pontificial Biblical Institute,!erusalem; Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action. By ALAN DoNAGAN. Studies in Philosophical Psychology, R. F. Holland, ed. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. Pp. x + 197. $29.95 (cloth). Readers of Donagan expecting a book in the style of The Theory of Morality will be surprised; Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action is far more compact and demanding. In setting out to support his thesis that the "propositional attitudes" (the term is taken from Russell) of beliefs and wishes explain choices which, in turn, explain human actions, the author considers a plethora of views and objections of both contemporary and traditional philosophers: Gilbert Ryle-whose Concept of Mind Donagan considers a classic of analytic Aristotelianism -Roderick Chisholm, Donald Davidson, Anthony Kenny, John Searle, Alvin Goldman, Elizabeth Anscombe, Bertrand Russell, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Wittgenstein, Quine, and Frege. At times the reader may wish that fewer theorists were appealed to, or perhaps that his or her familiarity with the views referred to were more extensive, or at least that (although not in the case of Frege) they were explicated in more detail. Further explication, however, could obscure hopelessly the line of reasoning of the author. While he appears to wish to give credit every place it is due, he also wishes to clarify the genesis of significant objections to be met by a defensible action theory. Happily, Donagan himself provides an overview of his project, which he calls a " Plan for an Investigation of Human Action on Socratic Lines." This is proffered in chapter one after the author has discussed the " Socratic tradition in the theory of human action " and the question "Should the Socratic tmdition be jettisoned as folk psychology?" BOOK REVIEWS 161 As these sections provide the foundation for Donagan's thesis, they are briefly summarized here. Considering both Aristotle and the " mediaeval Aristotelian " Aquinas to be in the Socratic tradition, Donagan emphasizes Aristotle's role in distinguishing human from animal action. Possibilities for acting are represented in the human intellect in propositions, toward which one can take various attitudes. Those philosophers who hold that such propositional attitudes cannot explain human action are challenged. Donagan then takes on those cognitive scientists who reject as " stagnant " and rooted in folk beliefs the Socratic theory of action. He rather impressively presents the problems involved in admitting, as do the " scientific psychologists," the practicality of employing the notion of propositional attitudes in history and natural sciences (which seem to exist in a context of history), while at the same time actually :rejecting the existence of such attitudes and hence their theoretical validity. Indeed, Donagan brings home the point that it is simply incon· sistent to hold both that there are no beliefs and that the belief that there are beliefs underlies a stagnant research program. Having thus sustained his position :regarding propositional attitudes in general, Donagan summarizes, chapter by chapter, his "contem· po:rary Socratic " plan for examining the actions of rational animals. It will be helpful to sketch this program, filling in crucial portions. In chapter two the author contends that bodily or mental actions are events that are individuals insofar as they are " changes or persistences in states of continuing individual objects" (p. 38). Propositional attitudes are states, but their arising and persistence in being as energeiai are events that explain,actions. Building on Aristotle's teaching and that of his mediaeval successors, in chapter three Donagan argues that beliefs and wishes, or the cognitive and appetitive propositional at· titudes, explain choices which in turn explain actions. In chapter four Donagan elucidates Durnmett's :revision of the Fregeau semantical theory, which he opts... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THOMISTIC METAETIDCS AND A PRESENT CONTROVERSY XOOD STARTING point for understanding the recent controversy regarding the Grisez-Finnis interpretaition oi St. Thomas Aquinas's ethical theory is Finnis's claim that "by a 'Simple act of non-inferential understanding one grasps that the objeot of the [natural] inclination which one experiences is an instance of a general form of good, for oneself (and others like one)." 1 For here Finnis is denying an (...) inferential process by which one moves from a theoretical understanding (" understanding this nature from the outside, as it were" 2) of what inclinations humans,as humans have to the conclusion that the object oi the particular inclination in question is ·a human good. Instead, he is asserting that it is in a practical context that one understands an object of an inclination to be a human good, and thus generates, via the practical reason, ·a practical, prescriptive principle. An example of such a principle is " Knowledge is something good to have " which, for Finnis, is the same logically as " Knowledge is a good to be pursued " 3 which, in turn, is equivalent to "Knowledge ought to be pursued ",4 which is a prescriptive ("normative") rather than descriptive (factual) utterance.5 1Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980; hereafter NLNR), p. 34. Cf. Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1983; hereafter FE), pp. 20-22. 2NLNR p. 34. s Ibid., p. 63. 4lbid., p. 42, note 56; "The Basic Principles of Natural Law: A Reply to Ralph Mclnerny," John Finnis and Germain Grisez, American Journal of Jurisprudence 26 (1981), pp. 21-31 (hereafter Reply to Mcinerny), pp. 23-24. See also Germain Grisez's well-known article "The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa theologiae, 1-2, Question 94, Article 2," Natural Law Forum 10 (1965), pp. 168-201 (hereafter FPPR), p. 194. 5 See, e.g., NLNR, pp. 44-45; Reply to Mcinerny, p. 23. Grisez and Finnis attempt to distinguish imperatives and prescriptions, which I argue against in 40 THOMISTIC METAETHICS AND A PRESENT CONTROVERSY 41 Finnis and Grisez, then, argue that practical principles, which encompass value-judgments about human goods, are arrived at through the practical reason and thus are prescriptive ("normative ") utterances, as opposed to descriptive or theoretical truths "of metaphysical anthropology ".6 Hence these principles cannot be derived from metaphysical claims.7 To argue for such,a derivation would he to hold that prescriptivity or normativity can emerge from pure descriptivity. Such a derivation, of course, would not account for the appearance of the prescriptive or action-guiding element. An alternative position, to be returned to below, is that value-judgments about human goods are descriptive in themselves. At the same time, owing to the natural inclination to do what we understand to be morally or humanly good, human beings could prescribe to themselves the pursuit of such human goods, once they are understood to be human goods. It should be noted that for Grisez and Finnis the basic practical principles are not moral but pre-moraL8 Still, Grisez and Finnis consider that they direct to ends completive of human nature. Hence, although these authors reserve the characterization of "' moraily right choices " to those that are not simply harmonious with one or another basic human good but rather to those that also do not run counter to any other human good,9 my paper "Is-Ought: Prescribing and a P1·esent Controversy," The Thomist 49, l (January, 1985), pp. 1-23 (hereafter Schultz), esp. pp. 10-Hl. s Reply to Mcinerny, pp. 23-24. 7 Ibid.; see note 13 below. In the paper mentioned in note 5 above I point out that Finnis seems to allow for the possibility of arriving at value-judgments through theoretical reasoning, since he says "I assert that judgments [about man's natural goods, about what man should be] are primarily (though perhaps not exclitsively) judgments of practical reason...." ("Natural Law and 'Is'-'Ought' Question: An Invitation to Professor Veatch," Catholic Lawyer 26, 4, 1981, p. 272, my emphasis. This article is subsequently referred to as Response to Veatch.) But he doesn't explain this, and in Reply to... (shrink)

The authors explore the simulating, philosophical question, "What is the importance of parks and recreation to the quality of life?". Asked by students, educators and practitioners alike, the answer to the question is the core of one's philosophy in the field of recreation. The text has been written so that it is easy to comprehend. The authors present the material in a first person plural and without gender biased language. Each section contains probing questions and a list of references.

Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardbound volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews treating all facets of medieval and Renaissance culture: history, art, literature, music, (...) science, law, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

Increasing rates of obesity have fueled interest in the factors underlying food choice. While epidemiological studies report that disadvantaged social groups exhibit a higher incidence of obesity, causal evidence for an effect of social contexts on food choice remains scarce. To further our knowledge, we experimentally investigated the effect of disadvantageous social context on food choice in healthy, non-dieting participants. We used three established experimental methods to generate social contexts of different valence in controlled laboratory settings: (i) receiving varying amounts (...) of money in a Dictator Game (DG; n = 40), (ii) being included or excluded in a Cyberball Game (CBG; n = 35), and (iii) performing well, average, or poorly in a response time ranking task (RTR; n = 81). Following exposure to a particular social context, participants made pairwise choices between food items that involved a conflict between perceived taste and health attributes. In line with previous research, stronger dispositional self-control, greater cognitive control of eating behavior, and lower external eating (all assessed via questionnaires) were associated with healthier food choices. As expected, being treated unfairly in the DG, being excluded in the CBG, and performing poorly in the RTR led to negative emotions. However, we did not find an effect of the induced social context on food choice in any of the experiments, even when taking into account individual differences in participants' responses to the social context. Our results suggest that-at least in controlled laboratory environments-the influence of disadvantageous social contexts on food choice is limited. (shrink)

Of the scholarly work that has been done in the last twenty years on the medieval French and German prologue, most falls into one of two classes. On the one hand are those studies that investigate a prologue for what it reveals of its author or of the work that follows. What, for instance, does Chrétien mean by “une molt bele conjointure,” and what does this imply about his Erec et Enide? What might Hartmann mean by “rehtiu güete,” and how (...) can our understanding of his meaning improve our understanding of Iwein? The second kind of study of medieval prologues pursues the opposite course, detaching the prologues from the works that follow and treating them separately, as members of an independent tradition, almost a genre. This second group, as it seeks to discover the poetics of the prologue, has not unreasonably turned to the poetic theory that might have been known to French and German authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. What, scholars of this second group have asked, can the classical rhetorical treatises teach us about Chrétien's prologues? And what help might the medieval artes poetriae offer in studying the German prologues of the thirteenth century? The substantial body of work produced by scholars who ask these types of questions suggests that they have found the classical and medieval treatises of considerable use in sketching out the poetics of the medieval prologue. As far as I can see, however, they are mistaken. For, as I hope to show below, neither the classical rhetoricians nor the medieval poetic theorists wrote with the prologues to written narrative in mind, nor can the precepts they propose come close to accommodating the great variety of actual medieval prologues. (shrink)

We suggest that certain experiences reported by patients with schizophrenia show that priority, consistency, and exclusivity are not sufficient for the experience of willing an action. Furthermore, we argue that even if priority, consistency, and exclusivity cause the experience of being the author of an action, this does not mean that conscious will is an illusion.

Diotima, the priestess of Plato’s Symposium, is an important reference for Proclus’ thinking about the role of women in philosophical and religious practices. This character does not just offer Proclus an example for women’s ability to attain the same level of virtue than men, but she is also a model for the joint work of philosophical and religious practices. Thereby she stands for practices which are orientated on the human condition and therefore depend on intermediary entities as demons, and for (...) practices which transcend both the human condition and the intermediary entities. Most interesting in Proclus’ presentation of Diotima as a priestess and a philosopher is that he does not present her to fulfill these roles by masculinizing her soul through a sole focus on the intelligible entities – as for example Porphyry advises his wife Marcella – but by using the female element in her soul, i.e. the circuit of the Different, as an intermediate through which she can get in touch with the demons and – through them – also with higher entities. The ideal which Diotima incorporates is therefore not becoming masculine but harmonizing the male and female elements within the soul. (shrink)