A review of the literature on corporate governance serves to demonstrate the applicability of many governance solutions to the university setting. Based on a review of university scandals, most of which are recent but some of which took place decades ago, it is possible to categorize them as follows: sex scandals, drugs, cheating, hazing, admissions and diplomas, on-the-job consumption, athletics, and murder. Several examples are provided in the paper, along with their impact on various stakeholders. The paper then discusses a (...) variety of solutions designed to either preempt the activities potentially leading to scandal, to deter them or to punish perpetrators. Some of these involve structural changes, institutional policies and procedures, fines, terminations, and sanctions. The paper emphasizes the proactive safeguards which govern and monitor to make sure that universities do not suffer on the back end and that their reputations do not suffer into the future. (shrink)

Communication is an important component in the construction of workplace identities, including leader and group identities. Micro-level analysis of everyday workplace discourse provides valuable insights into the way leadership is constructed and how workplace culture is created, maintained, and changed. In this context, leaders and managers are inevitably significant and influential participants, with a crucial impact on workplace culture. Drawing on audio and video data collected in 12 meetings of an IT department, the analysis demonstrates ways in which two leaders, (...) who succeed each other in the role of Director, reinforce and shape the culture of the workplace in which they operate. While both leaders claim teamwork as an important cultural value for their teams, their respective instantiations of teamwork are rather different. To explore the leaders' effect on the culture of their department, this investigation of leadership change examines ways in which the leaders manage regular workplace meetings and how they contribute to workplace humour. The analysis provides detailed evidence of the ways in which a change in leadership style can create the conditions for a change in the culture of a community of practice. (shrink)

Despite great advances in understanding genetic mechanisms, there still exists a bias toward equating genes with innate modules that determine important developmental events. But genes are equally relevant to understanding developmental plasticity shaped by ecological events. In other words, the term 'genetic inheritance' does not specify ontogenetic mechanisms. Here we present a case history of a species assumed to be under the control of prespecified genetic wiring to direct critical behavioral events such as communication and mating. We show, however, that (...) exogenetic processes stemming from the species's ontogenetic niche provide an alternative view of the flexibility of development especially with respect to behavioral performance. (shrink)

Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing is a technology which provides information about fetal genetic characteristics very early in pregnancy by examining fetal DNA obtained from a sample of maternal blood. NIPT is a morally complex technology that has advanced quickly to market with a strong push from industry developers, leaving many areas of uncertainty still to be resolved, and creating a strong need for health policy that reflects women’s social and ethical values. We approach the need for ethical policy-making by studying the (...) use of NIPT and emerging policy in the province of Ontario, Canada. Using an adapted version of constructivist grounded theory, we conducted interviews with 38 women who have had personal experiences with NIPT. We used an iterative process of data collection and analysis and a staged coding strategy to conduct a descriptive analysis of ethics issues identified implicitly and explicitly by women who have been affected by this technology. The findings of this paper focus on current ethical issues for women seeking NIPT, including place in the prenatal pathway, health care provider counselling about the test, industry influence on the diffusion of NIPT, consequences of availability of test results. Other issues gain relevance in the context of future policy decisions regarding NIPT, including funding of NIPT and principles that may govern the expansion of the scope of NIPT. These findings are not an exhaustive list of all the potential ethical issues related to NIPT, but rather a representation of the issues which concern women who have personal experience with this test. Women who have had personal experience with NIPT have concerns and priorities which sometimes contrast dramatically with the theoretical ethics literature. These findings suggest the importance of engaging patients in ethical deliberation about morally complex technologies, and point to the need for more deliberative patient engagement work in this area. (shrink)

In this article we provide a case history of the development of a communicative system in songbirds. In particular, we explore how brown-headed cowbirds, male and female, cooperate in the development and use of species-typical song. The goal is to show how social interactions between and within sexes create a platform for the production and perception of song. We consider six perspectives. First, we discuss the nature of the acoustic signal. Second, we look at the process of song learning. Third, (...) we describe a specific song mechanism, social shaping. Fourth, we look at the more general developmental process of neophenogenesis. Fifth, we consider the developmental ecology for social learning. Finally, we describe how social networks measures can be used to capture the nature of social interactions as the engines of song learning. Taken as a whole, we argue that culturally transmitted behaviors structure social interactions that predict the acquisition of species' typical behaviors necessary for successful reproduction. (shrink)

_Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning_ offers a provocative re-reading of Wittgenstein's later writings on language and mind, and explores the tensions between Wittgenstein's ideas and contemporary cognitivist conceptions of the mental. This book addresses both Wittgenstein's later works as well as contemporary issues in philosophy of mind. It provides fresh insight into the later Wittgenstein and raises vital questions about the foundations of cognitivism and its wider implications for psychology and cognitive science.

Anna Boncompagni’s Wittgenstein on Forms of Life, written for the Cambridge Elements of The Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is an excellent overview of the topic and does exactly what such an Elements book should do. Most importantly, it provides a map of the leading philosophical interpretations of Wittgenstein’s use of the phrase “form of life,” and so debates of how it is best to be understood. The map consists of three interpretive axes of dispute: natural vs. cultural, one vs. many, (...) a... (shrink)

Humour is a prevalent feature in any form of human interaction, regardless of language modality. This article explores in detail how humour is negotiated in conversations among deafblind Australians who are fluent users of tactile Australian Sign Language. Without access to the visual or auditory cues that are normally associated with humour, there is a risk that deafblind interactants will misconstrue humorous utterances as serious, or be unsure whether their conversation partner has got the joke. In this article, we explore (...) how humorous utterances unfold in tactile signed interactions. Drawing on Conversation Analytic principles, we outline the ad hoc and more conventionalised signals deafblind signers use to signal amusement. Looking at humour in these conversations contributes to a greater understanding of how humour is conveyed across language modalities and further support for humour’s centrality to interactional solidarity. (shrink)

For the past 5 years I have been photographing and interviewing men who play games based on contemporary conflicts. The games attempt to re-create scenarios that the US military is engaged in around the world like the "Hunt for Osama Bin Laden" that took place three years ago on a campground in Northern, Virginia. On a sociological level, the work speaks about the way that trauma and conflict penetrate a culture sheltered from the horrors of war. Many of the scenarios (...) are created and inspired from news reports and images and the stages where the games are played are often a poor imitation of the original scenes from photographs. The book will bring together the series of 24 photographs with essays discussing and analyzing the influence of the media, particularly photographs and video, on the culture at large and how conflict is "discussed" in the visual realm. (shrink)

The Theory Theory (TT) versus Simulation Theory (ST) debate is primarily concerned with how we understand others’ mental states. Theory theorists claim we do this using rules that are akin to theoretical laws, whereas simulation theorists claim we use our own minds to imagine ourselves in another’s position. Theorists from both camps suggest a consideration of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can help resolve the TT/ST debate (e.g., Baron-Cohen 1995; Carruthers 1996a; Goldman 2006). We present a three-part argument that (...) such research has so far been inconclusive and that the prospects for studies of ASD to resolve the debate in the near future remain uncertain. First, we discuss evidence indicating that some individuals with ASD can perform effectively on tests of mental state understanding, which questions what ASD can tell us regarding theorising or simulation. Second, we claim that there is compelling evidence that domain-general mechanisms are implicated in mental state reasoning, which undermines how ASD might inform the TT/ST debate given that both theories appeal to domain-specific mindreading mechanisms. Third, we suggest that neuroscientific evidence for an assumed role of the mirror neuron system in autism also fails to arbitrate between TT and ST. We suggest that while the study of ASD may eventually provide a resolution to the TT/ST debate, it is also vital for researchers to examine the issues through other avenues, for example, by examining people’s everyday counterfactual reasoning with mental state scenarios. (shrink)

Doig, Meredith The promise from new Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, to make Victoria the 'education state' is welcome and timely.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 7, Page 20-22, July 2011.

This book charts and challenges the bruising impact of post-Saussurean thought on the categories of experience and self-presence. It attempts a reappropriation of the category of lived experience in dialogue with poststructuralist thinking. Following the insight that mediated subjectivity need not mean alienated selfhood, Meredith forwards a postmetaphysical model of the experiential based on the interpenetration of poststructuralist thinking and hermeneutic phenomenology. Since poststructuralist approaches in feminist theory have often placed women's lived experiences "under erasure," Meredith uses this (...) hermeneutic/deconstructive model to attempt a rehabilitation of the singular "flesh and blood" female existent. (shrink)

I discuss Peter Singer’s claim that the interests of animals merit equal consideration with those of human beings. I show that there are morally relevant differences between humans and animals that Singer’s rather narrow utilitarian conception of morality fails to capture. Further, I argue that Singer’s formal conception of moral equality is so thin as to be virtually vacuous and that his attempts to give it moresubstance point to just the kind of differences between humans and animals that undermine his (...) equalitarian thesis. (shrink)

When I finally got eye glasses as a teenager, after denying the need for far too long, I was repeatedly surprised by the world that everyone else had been seeing all along. Leaves on the trees, graffiti by the highway—I was astonished, amazed, and suddenly informed. It is easy to assume we are seeing all we need to see, knowing all we need to know, until something jars us from this false comfort and compels us to reconsider. So it is (...) with thinking about the current state of doctor‐patient decisions. The unfocused view has physicians listening to patients and clearly communicating information about illnesses and treatment options, patients making good use of high‐quality data to craft sound decisions, and doctors joining patient preference with provider beneficence to optimize decisions. The reassuring outlook finds physician paternalism defeated, patients empowered, and all right with the world. Peter Ubel cannot let that fiction stand. In Critical Decisions: How You and Your Doctor Can Make the Right Medical Choices Together, Ubel reminds us that our work in actualizing patient autonomy and fostering patient participation in critical health decisions remains far from over. (shrink)

Excerpt from Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement: Translated, With Seven Introductory Essays, Notes, and Analytical Index It seems a strange fact that the works which have exerted the greatest and most permanent influence are those of which it is most difficult to give a final and conclusive interpretation. Is it that the philosophic mind merely amuses itself looking for the answers to riddles the solution of which destroys the interest, so that it is not so much misinterpretation as explanation that (...) great philosophers have to fear? Or is it that philosophers propose questions which depend upon higher categories than those of common understanding, with the natural result that their point of view is but imperfectly comprehended by lesser minds? Or is it simply that the works that have exerted most influence are those which arc most comprehensive and many-sided, and that different critics seize upon different aspects of the whole, and throw the emphasis on different points? It is not necessary to attempt to answer these questions generally, or further than affects Kant's Aesthetics. Certainly no work has exerted an equal influence on the subsequent history of aesthetics, and yet it has been most variously interpreted. However, while critics differ as to Kant's meaning on many essential points, they seem to be mostly agreed that the chief source of strength in the work lies in its comprehensiveness and its method. How they have been able to arrive at this conclusion in the face of their own criticisms, is a different matter. For they have for the most part attempted to show that the work as a whole involves an important modification of Kant's fundamental position of critical idealism, and that in its different parts it betrays considerable hesitation and vacillation of opinion on vital questions, and, moreover, frequently falls into flagrant inconsistency. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)