The study examines the relationship between the strength of an organizationÕs ethical climate and ethical problems involving human resource management. Data were collected through a survey of 1078 human resource managers. The results indicate a statistically significant negative relationship between the strength of an organization'ss ethical climate and the seriousness of ethical violations and a statistically significant positive relationship between an organization'ss ethical climate and success in responding to ethical issues. Thus, interventions that strengthen an organization'ss ethical climate may help (...) manage ethical behavior within organizations. (shrink)

What drives us to do good things, and to avoid doing bad? This book offers an integrative examination of the role of motivation in shaping moral cognition, judgement, and behavior.

Hintikka has criticized psychologists for "hasty epistemologizing," which he takes to be an unwarranted transfer of ideas from psychology (a discipline dealing with questions of fact) into epistemology (a discipline dealing with questions of method and theory). Hamlyn argues, following Hintikka, that Gibson's theory of perception is an example of such an inappropriate transfer, especially insofar as Hamlyn feels Gibson does not answer several important questions. However, Gibson's theory does answer the relevant questions, albeit in a new and radical way, (...) which suggests that the alleged distinction between psychology and epistemology is suspect. In fact, contrary to Hintikka and Hamlyn's claims, Gibson's theory of perception appears to be a valuable source of epistemological as well as psychological ideas. (shrink)

Presents essays (previously unpublished) by prominent philosophers on topics such as rationality and alien cultures, moral realism and social science, human sciences in the case of literature, Foucault's genealogical method, Vigotsky and artificial intelligence. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The book provides a practical guide to the application of Critical Realism (CR), an increasingly popular philosophy of social science, in empirical research projects. Each purpose-written chapter reviews major social science research methods and contains extended illustration of how to conduct inquiry using CR.

This addition to the Midwest Studies in Philosophy series comprises the most recent volume on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to date. Here 16 philosophers explore both the challenges Wittgenstein presented to philosophy as well as the responses to those challenges from such noted thinkers as Kripke. By addressing various questions raised by Wittgenstein's work, these original essays aim to illuminate in one way or another the impact Wittgenstein's legacy has had on 20th-century philosophy.

Contemporary Perspectives on the History of Philosophy was first published in 1983. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The authors of the 27 appears in Volume 8, Midwest Studies in Philosophy,have established reputations as historians of philosophy, but their vantage point, here, is from "contemporary perspectives" - they use contemporary analytic skills to examine problems and issues considered by past philosophers. The (...) papers, arranged in historical order, fall into six groups: ancient philosophy (the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle); the seventeenth-century rationalists (Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza); the empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, and Hume); Kant; the nineteenth century (Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Mill); and, in conclusion, an essay on Wittgenstein's Tractatus and two broad, retrospective papers entitled "Old Analyses of the Physical World and new Philosophies of Language" and "Moral Crisis and the History of Ethics.". (shrink)

Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This volume in the Midwest Studies in Philosophy series contains 18 essays which discuss the range of of religious traditions which inform the discussion of contemporary issues.

William James’s interest in psychical phenomena spanned his entire career as a scholar, yet is has been largely neglected. Few if any have adequately incorporated this quirky side of James into their critical studies of his scholarly contributions, not only in religious studies but also in philosophy and psychology. Psychical research was nevertheless very much part of James’s intellectual endeavors and, as this article shall argue, sheds light on an evolving, complex, and contradictory Jamesian cosmological realism. I will contextual James’s (...) widely discussed Varieties of Religious Experience, relying on his voluminous correspondence, and will explore various articulations of pragmatism, vis-à-vis James, John Dewey, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, particularly as those articulations apply to scholarship in religious studies and as they shed light on a Jamesian cosmology. I will then conclude with a discussion of psychical research as it relates to epistemology and the (scientific) study of that cosmos. (shrink)

Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

We develop a cultural evolutionary theory of the origins of prosocial religions and apply it to resolve two puzzles in human psychology and cultural history: (1) the rise of large-scale cooperation among strangers and, simultaneously, (2) the spread of prosocial religions in the last 10–12 millennia. We argue that these two developments were importantly linked and mutually energizing. We explain how a package of culturally evolved religious beliefs and practices characterized by increasingly potent, moralizing, supernatural agents, credible displays of faith, (...) and other psychologically active elements conducive to social solidarity promoted high fertility rates and large-scale cooperation with co-religionists, often contributing to success in intergroup competition and conflict. In turn, prosocial religious beliefs and practices spread and aggregated as these successful groups expanded, or were copied by less successful groups. This synthesis is grounded in the idea that although religious beliefs and practices originally arose as nonadaptive by-products of innate cognitive functions, particular cultural variants were then selected for their prosocial effects in a long-term, cultural evolutionary process. This framework (1) reconciles key aspects of the adaptationist and by-product approaches to the origins of religion, (2) explains a variety of empirical observations that have not received adequate attention, and (3) generates novel predictions. Converging lines of evidence drawn from diverse disciplines provide empirical support while at the same time encouraging new research directions and opening up new questions for exploration and debate. (shrink)

This work presents 26 essays that address the issue of moral concepts. Many of the essays contain examples that should make this volume suitable for teaching moral concepts in a college or university.

It is proposed that the Darwinian theoretical approach and account of living systems has not yet been clearly given. A first approximation to this is attempted, focussing on behavior in evolving environments. A theoretical terminology is defined emphasizing the mutuality of organism and environment and the existence of biologically theoretical entities.

RAID-II is a high-bandwidth, network-attached storage server designed and implemented at the University of California at Berkeley. In this paper, we measure the performance of RAID-II and evaluate various architectural decisions made during the design process. We first measure the end-to-end performance of the system to be approximately 20 MB/s for both disk array reads and writes. We then perform a bottleneck analysis by examining the performance of each individual subsystem and conclude that the disk subsystem limits performance. By adding (...) a custom interconnect board with a high-speed memory and bus system and parity engine, we are able to achieve a performance speedup of 8 to 15 over a comparative system using only off-the-shelf hardware. (shrink)

This volume, an expanded edition of the philosophy of language issue of the journal Midwest Studies in Philosophy (1977), includes essays by some of the ...

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

In 2004, Google embarked on a massive book digitization project. Forty library partners and billions of scanned pages later, Google Book Search has provided searchable text access to millions of books. While many details of Google’s conversion processes remain proprietary secret, here we piece together their general outlines by closely examining Google Book Search products, Google patents, and the entanglement of libraries and computer scientists in the longer history of digitization work. We argue that far from simply “scanning” books, Google’s (...) efforts may be characterized as algorithmic digitization, strongly shaped by an equation of digital access with full-text searchability. We explore the consequences of Google’s algorithmic digitization system for what end users ultimately do and do not see, placing these effects in the context of the multiple technical, material, and legal challenges surrounding Google Book Search. By approaching digitization primarily as a text extraction and indexing challenge—an effort to convert print books into electronically searchable data—GBS enacts one possible future for books, in which they are defined largely by their textual content. (shrink)

A psychology, Phenomenology and ontology of creativity developed by this french epistemologist and historian of science (1884-1962) are systematically described. Starting from analysis of image networks in literature, Bachelard presents imagination as autonomous, A power of human transcendence, A force preceding perception and memory. He ultimately surpasses psychological reductionism. Imagination of form is inferior to imagination of matter (depth); yet they both are secondary to dynamic imagination. Bachelard's fundamental method is a phenomenological study of images as origins of consciousness; a (...) phenomenology of reverie and writing underlies his ontology. Reverie is the model upon which imaginative consciousness is judged. Man should extend the freedom and beauty of his inner cosmos to enhance relation with the world. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

Family carers of individual’s living with Huntington’s Disease (HD) manage a distinct and unique series of difficulties arising from the complex nature of HD. This paper presents the validation of the definitive measure of quality of life for this group. The Huntington’s Disease Quality of Life Battery for carers (HDQoL-C) was expanded and then administered to an international sample of 1716 partners and family carers from 13 countries. In terms of the psychometric properties of the tool, exploratory analysis of half (...) of the sample, demonstrated good internal consistency and reliability. Some items on the full version did not meet psychometric thresholds and a short version (HDQoL-Cs) was developed based on more stringent criteria. Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the model structure showed a good fit for all Factors and, indicated that the HDQoL-C and HDQoL-Cs are psychometrically robust measures of quality of life. We found that carers who lived with and looked after their spouse/partner had reduced sense of coping, hope for the future and overall quality of life. Carers with children who were at risk, carried the gene or were symptomatic also had poorer quality of life outcomes. Findings indicated the HDQoL-C and HDQoL-Cs are valid in multiple languages and across varied cultures as measures of self-reported quality of life in family carers of individual’s living with HD. These psychometrically validated tools can aid and guide the implementation of therapeutic interventions to improve life quality in this population. (shrink)