Regulation of gatekeepers of taxation has been so controversial and important that a review of ethical standards, professional responsibility and industry guidelines is examined. This paper explores whether gatekeepers of taxation need more ethics and enforcement to increase the compliance rate. In this paper we argue that an effective mixture of professional ethics and enforcement of gatekeepers can increase tax compliance. However, we question how much is optimal or reasonable? We theorize that ethics and enforcement should be proportionate to the (...) ecosystem because too much of it can lead to unintended consequences such as increase costs and higher noncompliance. A friendlier tax authority with less complex laws can enhance the compliance process. This strategy, in amalgamation with professional ethics, enforcement policies, and effective reporting systems, could increase the compliance rate. (shrink)

My review of Cornelius Castoriadis' book Crossroads in the Labyrinth ended with the apt reference, I now see, to the emperor being naked. In Joel Whitebook's second review, largely irrelevant to my criticisms of Castoriadis, he fears, though he doesn't know me personally, that only the lack of psychological counseling can explain my uncontrolled anger against Castoriadis. Let me dignify his long distance psychoanalysis by passing over it in silence. Silence is also the best remedy for Whitebook's transcendental deduction that (...) I have a “pluralistic, localistic, discontinuous ontology.” Even if I knew what that was I find it amazing that he located it in a 10 page review. Perhaps Whitebook just “feels” the presence of this ontology along with evidence of my mental problems. (shrink)

This article studies the underinvestigated but fascinating issue of the sociological determinants of accounting misbehavior while focusing on an allegedly illicit accounting practice (i.e., restatement) in family- vs. nonfamily-controlled corporations. Under the framework of institutional anomie theory, we examined whether sociological structures (i.e., legal forces and cultural values) influence accounting errors inducing restatements. By applying a multivariate regression analysis to a sample of restating firms listed in 23 countries during the 2006 to 2014 period, we found that legal forces and (...) cultural values significantly moderate the severity of accounting errors. The results of this study suggest that investors, managers, and policymakers should more fully consider the sociological structures of societies when debating the feasibility of corporate misbehaviors, as combining firm-level and country-level analyses could help to predict a firm’s accounting misbehaviors, such as more severe accounting errors. (shrink)

This writer who has warned us of the “ideological” function of both the oeuvre and the author as unquestioned forms of discursive organization has gone quite far in constituting for both these “fictitious unities” the name (with all the problems of such a designation) Michel Foucault. One text under review, La Volonté de Savoir, is the methodological introduction of a projected five-volume history of sexuality. It will apparently circle back over that material which seems to have a special fascination for (...) Foucault: the gradual emergence of medicine as an institution, the birth of political economy, demography and linguistics as “human sciences,” the invention of incarceration and confinement for the control of the “other” in society (the mad, the libertine, the criminal) and that special violence that lurks beneath the power to control discourse. (shrink)

, Lawrie Reznek argues that disease is not a natural kind term. I raise objections to Reznek's two central arguments for establishing that disease is not a natural kind. In criticizing his a priori, conceptual argument against naturalism, I argue that his conclusion rests on a weaker argument that appeals to the empirical diversity in the symptoms and manifestations of disease. I also raise questions about the account of natural kinds which Reznek utilizes and his point that conventions for classification (...) are excluded by there being natural kinds. Keywords: Disease, natural kind, value judgement CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Contemporary Continental Philosophy steps back from current debates comparing Continental and analytic philosophy and carefully, yet critically outlines the tradition’s main philosophical views on epistemology and ontology. Forgoing obscure paraphrases, D’Amico provides a detailed, clear account and assessment of the tradition from its founding by Husserl and Heidegger to its challenge by Derrida and Foucault. Though intended as a survey of this tradition throughout the twentieth century, this study’s focus is on the philosophical problems which gave it birth and even (...) now continue to shape it.The book reexamines Husserl as an early critic of epistemological naturalism whose grasp of the philosophical importance of the theory of meaning was largely ignored. Heidegger’s contrasting effort to revive ontology is examined in terms of his distinction between ontic and ontological questions. In contrast with many earlier studies, the author outlines confusions engendered by the misappropriation of the distinct philosophical agendas of Husserl and Heidegger by such famous figures as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. The book is also original in its emphasis on how social externalism in epistemology, inspired by Karl Mannheim, influenced this tradition’s structuralist and Marxist phases. The philosophical defenses of a theory of interpretation by Gadamer and Habermas are closely examined and assessed and the study concludes with a a probing yet balanced account of Foucault and Derrida as critics of philosophical autonomy. The book concludes by reassessing this century-long divide between the analytic and Continental traditions and its implication for the future of philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter deals with the ways in which entrepreneurships driven by industrial design and the strategies for interconnecting design for innovation are articulated. In the first instance, current practices are recognized in order to analyze the different processes that entrepreneurial dynamics go through. This analysis is carried out from a systemic perspective, at three levels of abstraction: designer, entrepreneurship and ecosystem. The theoretical and conceptual framework will be structured based on the innovations driven by design, which occur around the designer, (...) his personal projects, and the possible interactions and singularities offered by living spaces. The objective of this work is to unravel the eventual relationships of the entrepreneurial designer in the ecosystem and to highlight the potential added by emerging connections, which allow for the projection of synergistic actions with other actors to create value(s). In this way, other possible views of the entrepreneurial process are provided, where the cultural and philosophical dimension that characterizes industrial designers allows them to achieve a higher quality of life, designing and producing collectively (in) their environment. (shrink)

What roles do women play in world politics? Who are these women, and what impact do they have on international relations? D'Amico and Beckman have assembled a diverse array of contributors who provide a variety of answers. Some contributors consider women as national leaders and profile Chamorro, Gandhi, Thatcher, and Aquino as examples. Autobiographical essays and interviews describe the experiences of Margaret Anstee, Benazir Bhutto, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Golda Meir. Other contributors analyze international women's movements, the roles of women (...) in the Green Movement and in the revolutionary movements in Cuba and Nicaragua, and the work of Jane Addams in the peace movement. Some analyze the attitudes and beliefs of America's leading opinion makers on the subject of women and men in leadership roles. Written for beginning students in comparative politics and international relations, their work is both fundamental as an introductory text and pioneering in scope and conception. (shrink)

A critical account of the case for historicism from Popper to Foucault, this volume, originally published in 1989, shows the viability of an historicist account of knowledge by replying to traditional objections and the need for defenses of realism and reference at the heart of most alternatives to historicism. The book provides insights to those in philosophy as well as literary criticism, intellectual history, history of science, and cultural criticism.

The proportionality standard demands a meaningful link between the severity of crimes and the punishments received for them. This article investigates the compatibility between this philosophical demand and the practical means most commonly associated with criminal justice provision: governmental decision making. In so far as criminal justice systems require the coordination of real human and physical resources, certain forms of knowledge and incentives are required to calculate, produce, and distribute outputs proportionately. Whereas markets rely upon pricing mechanisms to generate and (...) coordinate information and incentives across diverse stages of complex production processes, governmental decision making often lacks a calculation mechanism comparable to market prices through which knowledge about societal needs and demands can be conveyed and may thus inevitably result in some forms of punitive disparity. (shrink)

ExcerptDavid Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. Pp. 704. The Dawn of Everything is not just a massive book in terms of its total number of pages but also in the amount of archaeological evidence discussed concerning human “prehistory.” The authors range over current disputes within their disciplines as well as discussing in some detail political philosophies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In spite of its (...) size and range, the book has been widely reviewed and has had a publication success rarely seen with academic works. Attention to it may be in part due to the publishing career of its co-author David Graeber, who tragically died in 2020 just before the book appeared in print. The reason I mention this point is that Graeber’s work had both an academic and non-academic audience, in such books as Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, and The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement. He also had a public profile during the Occupy Wall Street movement beginning in 2011, which highlighted his advocacy of anarchism. Graeber’s political philosophy plays a significant role in this book. (shrink)

Este artículo investiga las narraciones de 1 Sam 9 y 1 Sam 28 a la luz del trasfondo más amplio del contexto sacrificial en el primer libro de Samuel. En concreto, este estudio muestra cómo los episodios, unidos por la escena de un banquete y el reparto de la comida sagrada, constituyen las partes de un sistema simbólico definido que, en sus resultados, es capaz de describir, definir y dirigir las relaciones entre los participantes en el ritual y la deidad. (...) A través del ejemplo de los banquetes de Saúl, primero con Samuel y luego con una nigromante en la aldea de En Dor, el texto de 1Sam define una jerarquía precisa entre la práctica cultual y la monarquía naciente en Israel. (shrink)

In a political version of the old biological cliché “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” Cornelius Castoriadis seems to embody in his personal evolution fetal stages in the labor pains of the left since World War II. According to Dick Howard in the The Marxian Legacy Castoriadis was a youthful member of the Greek Communist Party where opposition to Stalinism lead him to Trotsky. After the war and the resistance he emerges in Paris studying philosophy and cuts his political teeth on the splits (...) and schisms within the political fantasy world of the IV International. He founds Socialisme ou Barbarie, abandons Trotskyism, moves through the Western Marxist tradition and after more splits and more journals he ends up, after May 68, a practicing psychoanalyst. (shrink)

A general framework by which dynamic interactions within a protein will promote the necessary series of structural changes, or “conformational cycle,” required for function is proposed. It is suggested that the free‐energy landscape of a protein is biased toward this conformational cycle. Fluctuations into higher energy, although thermally accessible, conformations drive the conformational cycle forward. The amino acid interaction network is defined as those intraprotein interactions that contribute most to the free‐energy landscape. Some network connections are consistent in every structural (...) state, while others periodically change their interaction strength according to the conformational cycle. It is reviewed here that structural transitions change these periodic network connections, which then predisposes the protein toward the next set of network changes, and hence the next structural change. These concepts are illustrated by recent work on tryptophan synthase. Disruption of these dynamic connections may lead to aberrant protein function and disease states. (shrink)

La metafisica de Nicolás de Cusapresentada, por primeira vez, en su obra capitalDe docta ignorantia presenta como una desus nociones fundantes la ldea de Máximo absolutosegún la cual la maximldad, por ser tal,carece de toda relación. Así pues, el Máximoabsoluto debe ser concebido en coincidencia consu opuesto, el mlnimo absoluto - coinc:identiaoppositorum - y, al mismo tiempo, puesto quenada se le opone, co-irnplicando en sí mismotodas las cosas - complicatio absoluta - sln sernlnguna de ellas de modo singular. De estamanera, (...) el Máximo resulta la forma única universalde todo lo real y lo posible. las ideas en e!Lógos divino, noción que atraviesa diversasexpresiones dei neoplatonismo cristiano, aparecenaqui unificadas e igualadas en una únicaesencia, que es el mismo Logos, que "corre" portodas las cosas y es su quididad absoluta. Estapresentación nos conduce necesariarnente a lapregunta por la constitución de la singularidad ypor la predicación universal acerca de estoasingulares. A la primera pregunta respondeNicolás con la doctrina de la "contracción"; a lasegunda debemos responder nosotros reconstruyendola idea cusana de des-velarniento deimuno que lleva a cabo la humana mens a partirdei entramado nocional de géneros y especies.Esta construcción nocional llevará al Cusano allamar al hombre "segundo dios". (shrink)

En el sugestivo libro aparecido en 1991 ¿Qué es la filosofía? Gilles Deleuze y Félix Guattari definen la filosofía como creación de conceptos. Añaden asimismo que esos nuevos conceptos necesitan personajes conceptuales que contribuyan a definirlos. No son muchas las veces que se asiste a la creación de un concepto. Un ejemplo recurrente es el cogito cartesiano: ¿por qué es verdaderamente una creación? En primer lugar porque no supone otros conceptos pero, sin embargo, es comprensible porque está sostenido por una (...) imagen presupuesta: todo el mundo sabe qué significa pensar. Con todo, sostienen los autores, "hay algo a medio camino entre el plano del concepto y el plano preconceptual, que va de uno a otro" (DELEUZE; GUATTARI, 1993, p 63-ss). Es el personaje conceptual. En el caso del cogito, sostienen los autores, se trata del Idiota: él es quien dice Yo, él es quien lanza el cogito... El Idiota es el pensador privado por oposición al profesor público, el profesor universitario. (shrink)

From 1969 through the 70's Mitchell Franklin was Emeritus Professor of Law and Philosophy at SUNY Buffalo. Over this period his teaching gradually shifted to philosophy where he gave a series of lectures on Hegel, Marx and Neo-Hegelianism, which attracted and influenced a new group of students. These philosophy students were rediscovering the Continental tradition and turning to phenomenology, Western Marxism and German Idealism against die positivist and analytic traditions which had a dying but tenacious hold on philosophy. The following (...) essays are in memory of Franklin's influence and theoretical work. Hopefully these essays can begin to make him part of an on going discussion and overcome die obstacles of his style and hard to locate publications. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza el contexto en el que surge la Universidad en el occidente latino medieval y en ese marco la teorización y profesionalización de la filosofía. Por otra parte, expone de qué manera esta profesionalización impone su propia negación como la filosofía en lengua vulgar y los saberes no universitarios. Finalmente, reflexiona sobre la Universidad hoy.

Este artículo presenta la revisión de los antecedentes medievales sobre el diálogo entre las diferentes religiones. Esta revisión tiene lugar a la luz del De pace fidei de Nicolás de Cusa, que ha sido interpretado en la modernidad como un modelo de tolerancia religiosa. La inaccesibilidad de la verdad o deus absconditus y el factum de la diversidad, sientan las bases para la búsqueda de la unidad en la diferencia. La fundamentación filosófica de la Trinidad y la Encamación, cuya aceptación (...) es indispensable para la construcción de la paz de la fe, muestra la coherencia que Nicolás establece entre filosofia y teologia, entendidas ambas en el sentido de la docta ignorantia. (shrink)

Spreading the universal monarchy myth in the early 16th century was closely linked to the magnitude of the territories controlled by Charles V. For the imperial chancellor Mercurino Gattinara, universal and messianic ideas, which were integrated into the symbolism of the Empire, were to legitimate a policy that aimed at giving a more rational structure to Charles’ territories and at securing a prominent influence for the Habsburg family in the whole of Europe. Gattinara imagined a kind of supranational monarchy, organised (...) in accordance with the mythical model of the Roman Empire, which would be able to guarantee peace under the aegis of Christianity. (shrink)

La diffusion du mythe de la monarchie universelle au début du XVIe siècle est strictement liée à l’ampleur des territoires possédés par Charles Quint. Pour le chancelier impérial Mercurino Gattinara, les idées universalistes et messianiques, qui accompagnaient la symbolique de l’Empire, devaient servir à légitimer une politique visant à donner une structure plus rationnelle aux territoires de Charles Quint et à garantir aux Habsbourg une influence prépondérante dans l’ensemble de l’Europe. Gattinara imaginait une sorte de monarchie supranationale organisée selon le (...) modèle mythique de l’Empire romain, capable de garantir la paix sous l’égide du christianisme. (shrink)

As far as I know, this is the first book-length study of Ernst Tugendhat in English. That is a bit of a surprise since Tugendhat is the last of Heidegger's students who went on to develop a significantly distinct philosophical approach, and it was one closer to the practice of philosophy in the United States and England than in Germany. The fact that this book is the author's expanded translation from the Italian probably indicates that this lack of attention to (...) Tugendhat remains in the English-speaking philosophical community. But we have to start somewhere, and this book is a useful…. (shrink)

In response to "‘Counting As’ a Bridge Principle: Against Searle Against Social-Scientific Laws," Elijah Weber distinguishes two sorts of physical open-endedness and claims our article appeals to the wrong sort. We clarify that Searle’s notion of physical open-endedness is neither of the notions Weber introduces, thus our original reply to Searle is not targeted by Weber’s objections. Also, Weber’s lengthy example concerning counterfeit currency appears to build-in the extremely contentious assumption that scientific laws are impossible if and when relevant conditions (...) do not happen to obtain. (shrink)

Title: The Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology, Society, and PoliticsPublisher: Oxford University PressISBN: 0195106458Author: Philip PettitTitle: Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and GovernmentPublisher: Oxford University PressISBN: 0198296428Author: Philip Pettit.

This chapter contains sections titled: Historiographic Concepts Historical Laws Historiographic Interpretations Conclusion References.

At the end of World War II Karl Popper, at the time a little known philosopher of science, published The Open Society and Its Enemies. He dedicated the book to the victims of both Hitler's and Stalin's camps and called it his “war effort.” The book had an enormous impact and spawned both imitators, such as Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, and a great deal of debate. Whatever else it accomplished Popper's work politicized the history of ideas. Against the (...) devastation of the war Popper refused to grant either innocence or quietude to the history of philosophy. He argued that ways of thinking and talking had terrible consequences; that philosophers legitimated terrible damage in their seemingly abstract inquiry. (shrink)