Under present accounting rules, lessees frequently structure contracts for leased assets, in situations where they enjoy benefits similar to outright ownership, in a way that keeps both the leased assets and related liabilities off their books. This method of accounting creates off-balance sheet financing and is called operating lease accounting. The paper debates the ethicality of intentionally structuring lease contracts to avoid disclosing leased asset and liability amounts and describes the “slippery slope” of rule-based accounting for synthetic leases and special (...) purpose entities, that, in the author’s opinion, led to the accounting debacles at Enron and other companies. The ethical intent that is implicit in the Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Accounting Standards Board regulations is discussed and suggestions for improving the ethicality of financial reporting are provided. (shrink)

The paper discusses examples of integrative metatheoretical and theoretical work undertaken in the spirit of unification. Unification is defined as a recursive process in which the outcome of any one integrative episode provides ideas that may enter into further such episodes. The conceptual materials entering into integration exist at different levels and in distinct contexts. At the metatheoretical level, the examples relate to a number of contexts and issues, including methodological individualism versus holism. At the theoretical level, two examples of (...) the idea of a unification episode are described. In each instance, the ideas entering into the integrative episode are drawn from distinct research programs. It is argued that the spirit of unification, as embodied in theoretical practice along the lines suggested by the examples, can create bridges between disparate theory enterprises so as to help break down particularistic barriers within sociological theory. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between income concentration and policy outputs that determine the generosity of two major state-level safety net programs: unemployment insurance and cash social assistance. Using a difference in differences framework, it tests the degree to which the top 1 percent share is associated with benefit replacement rates for these programs during the period 1978–2010. The results suggest that higher state income inequality lowers those states’ welfare benefits significantly in ways consistent with a “plutocracy” hypothesis that has (...) been suggested in work by scholars such as Bartels, Bonica, Gilens, and Page. The results are robust to controls for several alternative explanations for benefit generosity, including citizen ideology, party control of government, fiscal pressure on programs, state racial heterogeneity, and public opinion liberalism. The results thus support the notion that growing income concentration at the very top undermines social protection policies. (shrink)

Bonaventure’s Aesthetics: The Delight of the Soul in Its Ascent into God provides an extensive analysis of Bonaventure’s concept of beauty, the first to appear since Balthasar’s Herrlichkeit, and the role it plays in the Itinerarium mentis in Deum.

The concept of implicit bias has become a staple in social psychology as well as epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy; so much so that so-called implicit association tests (IAT) and policies against the effects of implicit bias have been implemented as political tools (particularly in Anglophone countries). This article argues that parts of implicit bias research rest on two assumptions which have not yet received sufficient critical attention. The eradication assumption holds that implicit biases can and ought to be done (...) away with. The pejorative assumption holds that biases are necessarily morally (and/or epistemically) pernicious. Drawing on Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory of Vorurteil (prejudice), this article argues that implicit bias is a smaller species of the wider genus of (Gadamerian) prejudices such that both the eradication assumption and pejorative assumption turn out to be flawed. This is to the effect that implicit biases are neither necessarily morally pernicious, nor can they be fully eradicated. Instead, they present an essential part of human cognition as such. (shrink)

This paper critiques the standard presentation of arguments from analogy in logic textbooks and offers an alternative way of understanding them which renders them both more plausible and more easily evaluated for their strength. The typical presentation presents analogies as inductive arguments in which a set of properties, known to be shared by two logical domains, supports an inference about a further property, known to belong to one domain and inferred to belong to the target domain. But framed in these (...) terms, the strength of the argument depends entirely on the relevance of the known shared properties to the inferred shared property, meaning the argument rests on an unstated assumption. Against this view, the author maintains that arguments from analogy are figurative ways of addressing properties of the target logical domain. By comparing or contrasting two logical domains, analogies articulate a general principle which illustrates something difficult to imagine or to describe literally about the target domain. Analogies can be reformulated and evaluated as deductive arguments on this view, with their chief logical import being the inquiry they incite in students as to whether the general principle is true and sufficiently general to apply to the target domain. (shrink)

Studies of learning in marine invertebrates have yielded new information, implicating protein kinase C and calmodulin‐dependent protein kinase as critical components in pathways for learning and memory that are shared with higher vertebrates. Recent advances correlating in vitro biochemical and biophysical measurements with in vivo learning have begun to elaborate the roles in memory storage for these two kinases, their substrates, and signaling proteins such as calexcitin and calmodulin. Other studies have implicated transcription factors associated with kinases such as the (...) cyclic AMP response element binding protein (CREB). These experiments have resulted in a greater understanding of the role of second messengers, principally calcium and cyclic AMP (cAMP), as vehicles for transforming memory‐specific effects occurring at the membrane into permanent DNA‐mediated cellular and structural changes. (shrink)

Classical and medieval writers had no term for consciousness in anything like the modern sense, and their philosophy seems not to have been troubled by the mind-body problem. Contemporary eliminativists find strong support in this fact for their claim that consciousness does not exist, or, at least, is not an appropriate scientific explanandum. They typically hold that contemporary conceptions of consciousness are artefacts of Descartes' (now outmoded) views about matter and his unrealistic craving for epistemological certainty. Essentially, they say, our (...) belief in consciousness is a residue of once pressing, but now irrelevant, intellectual tensions between religion and the rising new science of the Early Modern period. With the attempts of Descartes and his successors to resolve these tensions, Western thought began down a track toward the conceptual cul-de-sac of the "hard problem". Plausibly, the problem will only be (dis)solved, and the onward march of science assured, when we are able to shake off the pervasive influence of the Cartesian tradition in a way that goes far beyond the mere rejection of dualism. But when we do so, eliminativists contend, the distinctively Cartesian notion of consciousness will simply drop out of our world-picture, like phlogiston or the vital entelechy. (shrink)

This thesis examines how association football evolved in Liverpool in the period before the Great War, and how the sport impacted on the lives of Liverpudlians during this period. Specific consideration is given in the first two chapters to the introduction of football to Liverpool and its progressive commercialisation. The third chapter examines the backgrounds of the city's professional footballers and their relationship with supporters and clubs. The role in Liverpool of amateur, semi-professional, and schoolboy football is considered in the (...) fourth chapter. Identities form a common theme of the final chapters, which examine the local culture of football supporters and newspapers' relationship with the game. The study uses a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including some previously unconsidered evidence. It is argued that previous interpretations of the sport's introduction are misleading and that football actually originated as a Muscular Christian initiative by Cambridge educated clergy at the end of the 1870s. Despite this comparatively late introduction, political and business interests influenced football, and in Liverpool the sport underwent an intense process of commercialisation. Profit seems to have been a priority for the original Everton FC and its positive commercial prognosis led to the club's selection as a founder member of the Football League. The scale of importation of professional footballers by Everton and Liverpool football clubs was to the detriment of local talent, although the city's amateur game was thriving by the 1900s. Though football was immensely popular in Liverpool, the city's unusual social and economic demography meant that a significant proportion of its population were unable to attend professional matches, or to make a significant contribution to the amateur game. From the 1900s, attendances in Liverpool grew more slowly as major football clubs in other cities attracted more spectators. (shrink)

Researches over many years have examined whether levonorgestrel emergency contraception has a postfertilization effect. In a recent article in the Catholic Health Association’s journal Health Progress, Sandra Reznik, MD, asserts that “levonorgestrel acts to prevent pregnancy before, and only before, fertilization occurs.” A companion article by Ron Hamel, PhD, argues for the moral certainty that Plan B is not an abortifacient. Reznik fails to address the principal model supporting a potential postfertil­ization mechanism of action, specifically, that preovulatory administration of levonorgestrel (...) disrupts the delicate ratio of estrogen and progesterone essential to healthy endometrial development and induces the equivalent of luteal phase insufficiency, thereby jeopardizing implantation. Hamel’s argument for moral certitude is similarly inadequate. This article critically reviews both articles and the sources on which they rely. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 : 741–772. (shrink)

The present work is a study of the method of contemporary Soviet philosophy. By "Soviet philosophy" we mean philosophy as published in the Soviet Union. For practical purposes we have limited our attention to Soviet sources in Russian in spite of the fact that Soviet philosophical works are also published in other languages (see B 2029(21)(38». The term "method" is taken in the sense usual in Western books on methodology .1 In view of the content of the first chapter it (...) will be useful to explain the last term a little more fully. By method we mean a procedure and it is obvious that the principles according to which a procedure is carried out are rules, i.e. imperatives, which tell us not what is but what should be done. Such imperatives mayor may not be connected with and founded on certain descriptive statements (the fact that every rule of formal logic is based on a corresponding law has been well-known since Husserl's "Logische Unter suchungen" and is generally accepted in contemporary logic), but such a foundation is irrelevant to a methodological study. The object of such a study is to find out what these rules are, why they are accepted and how they are inter-connected and applied. This is how methodology - the science of method - is conceived in Western treatises on the subject and this is also the standpoint assumed here. (shrink)

Drawing on aspects of Foucauldian feminist theory Thomas Hardy, Femininity and Dissent offers original and detailed readings of six critically under-valued novels: Desperate Remedies, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Hand of Ethelberta, A Laodicean, Two on a Tower and The Well-Beloved, demonstrating Hardy's peculiarly modern appreciation of how individuals negotiate the forces which shape their sense of self. Tracing his interest in the evolutionary debate and the woman question this book reveals a new politically engaged rather than a (...) grimly pessimistic Hardy. (shrink)

Countless academic books have been written about how to interpret literary texts. From reader response criticism to Marxist hermeneutics and beyond, the scholarship on interpretive methods is vast. Yet all these books fail to address a more fundamental question: Why should we read in the first place? Or, to put it another way, why is reading an important thing to do? In order to answer these questions, Thomas J. Millay turns to the wisdom of Danish philosopher-theologian Søren Kierkegaard. In (...) this the first book to be written on Kierkegaard's philosophy of reading, Millay finds that reading does have a specific purpose: it is supposed to change your life. With lucid, nontechnical prose, Millay both establishes the definitive interpretation of Kierkegaard's philosophy of reading and explores the various concrete practices Kierkegaard recommended for its implementation"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

High quality images sell products. Here's how you do it. From cereal boxes to billboards to photos on Amazon, product photos have a strong impact on viewers. Now you can master the secrets of effective product photography with this essential guide. Author J. Dennis Thomas guides you through the basics, from selecting the right equipment and practicing different lighting techniques to controlling exposure, using backgrounds and props, and much more. Whether it's jewelry, food, fashion, or other products, learn how (...) to photograph for effective selling, while building the skills and tools you need for a career. Explains how to produce quality photos for product or commercial photography, including fashion, food, jewelry, technology, and more The author is a professional photographer whose work has been published in major U.S. magazines including Rolling Stone, Elle, W Magazine, and US Weekly Covers choosing the right equipment, practicing different lighting techniques, controlling exposure, using backgrounds and props, and more Gives new and even experienced photographers the tools they need to build careers in product photography Take photographs that impress, intrigue, dazzle, and sell with The Art and Style of Product Photography. (shrink)

This article proposes that Goffman's "Frame Analysis" can be interpreted as a step toward unpacking the idea of context. His analysis implies a recursive model involving frames within frames. The key problem is that neither Goffman nor anyone else has clearly defined what is meant by a frame. I propose that it can be represented by a word, phrase, or proposition. A subjective context can be represented as an assembly of these items, joined together by operators such as and, since, (...) if, not, and then. Furthermore, this model can be combined with the recursive levels of mutual awareness in earlier approaches to consensus. The combination would represent the inter subjective context: it can be used to find the minimum amount of background that would allow consensual interpretations of discourse. It could also construct a chain that links discourse to the institutional level, the micro-macro pathway from word and gesture to social structure. Goffman hinted that mathematical notation might be used to represent a frame assembly. By adding levels of awareness to such notation, it could represent social facts. Because the use of vernacular words rather than concepts is a problem in social science, Goffman's approach has a general as well as a particular significance. (shrink)

This article suggests that studies of self-esteem using scales have reached a dead end, and suggest alternative directions. First we show how significance tests have obscured meager results. According to reviews, this huge body of research has yielded no substantial findings. Some sub-fields show consistent, but trivially small, effects; reviews of the entire field show none at all. Most important, the size of effects does not seem to be increasing. Three questions are raised: 1. Are new standards needed to determine (...) when to continue or stop a given line of research? 2. Are new approaches needed alternative to standardized scales and statistical tests? 3. Should future studies of self-esteem emphasize feeling and social components at least as much as cognitive components? Studies of self-esteem using interview techniques by George Brown and his colleagues suggest the need to move closer to actual data. An exploratory study that takes this direction a step further is described. We analyze social and cognitive/emotional elements second by second in discourse about topics relevant to self-appraisal and self-feeling. (shrink)