Academic integrity is an essential pillar of any educational system. It is defined as acting in a manner consistent with the values and accepted standards of ethical practices in teaching, learning, and scholarship (Fishman, 2015). Contract cheating, or ghostwriting, is currently one of the most severe violations of academic integrity. It involves students engaging a third party, usually an online essay writing service, to complete their academic works on their behalf (Draper et al., 2021). Some of these services (...) offer pre-written essays, whereas others offer bespoke custom-written essays. According to the academic literature, the advent of the internet and digital technologies underlay this rapid deterioration of academic integrity (Ison, 2020; Lancaster & Clarke, 2014). Different learning environments, such as face-to-face (i.e., a learning environment involving the physical presence of both instructor and students) and online web-based (i.e., teaching mode that takes place partially or entirely over the internet), have been shown to affect academic integrity in different ways (Eshet et al., 2021). While contract cheating is common in both conventional face-to-face (F2F) and online settings, it is more likely to take place in the latter (Lancaster & Clarke, 2014; Slade et al., 2018). There are several possible explanations for why online students engage in contract cheating more often than F2F students. In particular, this includes the problem issue of psychological distance, which adversely affects interpersonal relationships; and the problem issue of moral distancing, because the internet can obscure the line between academically honest and dishonest behavior (Sharma & Maleyeff, 2003). These issues were further exacerbated by the sudden shift from F2F to emergency remote teaching (ERT) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (Ahsan et al., 2021; Bjelobaba, 2021). Indeed, contract cheating had become a significant COVID-19 side effect for higher education institutions. In contrast to the well-planned F2F or online learning courses, ERTbased courses are not originally designed to be delivered virtually (Fatonia et al., 2020). The chaos brought by the abrupt campus closure and related unexpected transition to ERT provided both the opportunity and the incentive for contract cheating (Hill et al., 2021). Through social media, students have very quickly become fully aware of the possibilities of a wide variety of options to carry out Plagiarism (Bautista et al., 2022). There has been an increase in ways to try to bypass text-matching or text-reuse (i.e., plagiarism) detection systems, for example using micro-spaces, white ink, punctuation, and typos (Abdelhamid et al., 2022). Even though ghostwriters, especially commercial ones, claim their essays are original and therefore cannot be detected using text-matching software, third-party assignments may still contain recycled text (Aitken et al., 2017; Newton & Lang, 2015). Text matching detection software could use these breaches to identify outsourced academic work (Lancaster & Clarke, 2016; Wang & Xu, 2021). This study compared about four thousand term papers written in languages other than Hebrew. (shrink)

Contract cheating, or students outsourcing their assignments to be completed by others, has emerged as a significant threat to academic integrity in higher education institutions around the world. During the COVID-19, when traditional face-to-face instruction became unsustainable, the number of contract cheating students increased dramatically. Through focus group interviews, this study sought the perspectives of 25 students enrolled in first year writing in a private higher education institution in Kuwait during the pandemic in 2020–2021, on their (...) attitudes towards contract cheating. MAXQDA 2020 was used to examine the data. The participants believe that the primary motivations for engaging in contract cheating are mainly the opportunities presented by online learning and the psychological and physical challenges they experienced during online learning. Those who did not cheat had some shared traits, such as a competitive spirit, confidence in their talents, and a strong desire to learn. Additionally, those with high moral values avoided cheating. To combat contract cheating, students believe that teaching and evaluation techniques should be drastically altered and that students should be educated about plagiarism, while institutions should impose tougher sanctions on repeat offenders. (shrink)

There is at least one immediate sense in which legal discourse is perspectival: it qualifies acts and facts in the world on the basis of rules. Legal concepts are for the most part constituted by rules, both in the sense that rules define these concepts’ semantic content and that, in order to engage with legal practice, we must act according to those rules, not necessarily complying with them but at least having them in mind. This is the distinctive perspective of (...) law: however, it would be misleading to think that this is the only perspective we can have in legal discourse. That of rule-constituted legal concepts is the fundamental perspective -- the inevitable presupposition of most legal assertions -- but other perspectives are possible on top of this fundamental background: perspectives on law, stemming from the basic perspective of law. -/- In this paper, I will try to argue that some different perspectives regarding law can be accounted for by analyzing different kinds of concepts that emerge in connection with legal institutions. My argument will consist of three steps as follows. First, I will explain how legal concepts are constituted by rules, referring in this regard to John Searle’s analysis of institutional concepts as it emerges in his Making the Social World, of 2010, and amending this analysis according to some criticisms that in 1986 Neil MacCormick had raised against Searle with specific reference to the legal domain. -/- Second, I will show that there are some kinds of concepts relevant for an institution which are not captured by Searle’s analysis in terms of constitutive rules, even if this is amended according to MacCormick’s criticisms. This I will do by considering the game of chess as a simple system of rule-constituted concepts (concepts such as 'checkmate,' 'bishop,' 'king'). I will consider four examples of perfectly legitimate assertions regarding a match of chess -- these being (1) ‘I won’; (2) 'you made a good attack'; (3) 'you are cheating'; (4) 'you made good use of the first-move advantage,' and I will show that, while the first three assertions can be analyzed in terms of concepts (those of 'victory,' 'attack,' and 'cheating') which are not constituted by the rules of chess but are rather common to several different competitive games, being typical of the broader practice of competitive game-playing of which chess is an instance, the fourth assertion includes a concept (that of 'first-move advantage') which is peculiar to chess, just like a rule-constituted element, but is not constituted by the rules of chess. This analysis will lead to a new categorization of institutional concepts. Apart from rule-constituted institutional concepts, which are the only ones recognized by Searle, in order to account for cases (1), (2), and (3) I will distinguish between three kinds of meta-institutional concepts, namely, goal-oriented, mode-oriented, and value-oriented meta-institutional concepts, and then I will introduce the category of para-institutional concepts to account for case (4). -/- Finally -- and this is the third step of my argument -- I will explain how these different kinds of institutional concepts appear when we adopt different perspectives on the institutional frameworks we deal with. This will lead us to a categorization of possible perspectives regarding law that corresponds to the previous one regarding concepts. There is first a structural perspective regarding the instantiation of institutional elements which clearly involves rule-constituted institutional concepts -- as when we say 'I am making a will.' There is then a teleological perspective regarding the goal of our institutional acts which calls into question goal-oriented meta-institutional concepts -- as when we say 'I wrote that will in order for you to have a distinctive right to my property.' Then, we can adopt a strategical perspective regarding some peculiar ways in which institutional acts can be performed, and this has often to do with mode-oriented meta-institutional concepts -- as when we say 'the Labour Party is making parliamentary obstructionism so that the Government will fall before the enactment of the labour reform,' or 'workers start today a work-to-rule action.' Clearly, we can also adopt an evaluative perspective over institutional facts or acts, and here typically value oriented meta-institutional concepts emerge -- as when we say 'that rule is clearly unjust' or 'that contract is unfair.' Finally, we can limit ourselves to a descriptive perspective on phenomena which are peculiar to a given institutional setting, and here para-institutional concepts are often useful -- as when we say 'the Italian electoral system before 1990 led to a sort of reform paralysis' or 'a strict use of the criterion requiring proof beyond any reasonable doubt can be expected to entail a low conviction rate.'. (shrink)

Cheating is widely considered a condemnable behavior in society and a big problem in the educational system. In this study, we employ the information-processing-based Bayesian Mindsponge Framework to explore deeper the subjective cost-benefit evaluation involving the perceived value of cheating. Conducting Bayesian analysis on 493 university students from Germany, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, and Japan, we found that students who have more positive attitudes toward cheating are more likely to cheat. However, a higher capability of cognitive reflection acts (...) as a moderator that negates the above effect. Re-evaluation of prior thoughts allows for more accurate assessments of the associated risks and possible costs, which help reduce the probability of carrying out cheating behavior. As rapid technological advancement may introduce new and efficient cheating methods, a better understanding of the psychology of cheating in students can help schools prepare better countermeasures. (shrink)

For decades Darwinian processes were framed in the form of the Lewontin conditions: reproduction, variation and differential reproductive success were taken to be sufficient and necessary. Since Buss and the work of Maynard Smith and Szathmary biologists were eager to explain the major transitions from individuals to groups forming new individuals subject to Darwinian mechanisms themselves. Explanations that seek to explain the emergence of a new level of selection, however, cannot employ properties that would already have to exist on that (...) level for selection to take place. Recently, Hammerschmidt et al. provided a ‘bottom-up’ experiment corroborating much of the theoretical work Paul Rainey has done since 2003 on how cheats can play an important role in the emergence of new Darwinian individuals on a multicellular level. The aims of this paper are twofold. First, I argue for a conceptual shift in perspective from seeing cheats as a ‘problem’ that needs to be solved for multi-cellularity to evolve to the very ‘key’ for the evolution of multicellularity. Secondly, I illustrate the consequences of this shift for both theoretical and experimental work, arguing for a more prominent role of ecology and the multi-level selection framework within the debate then they currently occupy. (shrink)

Cheating is a major problem in society, especially in the educational system. From the viewpoint of subjective cost-benefit analysis, concerns about reputation damage as well as considerations of cultural values against unethical behavior can help increase the perceived costs of cheating. To explore deeper into the psychological processes in such assessments, we employ Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics – an information-processingbased method. Conducting Bayesian analysis on 493 university students from Germany, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, and Japan, we found that (...) reputation concern is negatively associated with cheating behavior. If a student embraces Confucian values, the above negating effect is stronger. Our findings support the notion that mentally simulated negative consequences of cheating reduce the probability of carrying out such behavior. As the educational system is changing rapidly due to technological advancement, a better understanding of the influences of sociocultural factors can be helpful in cheating prevention efforts. (shrink)

How would you feel about your husband, wife, or partner masturbating using pornography or erotica? For many, this would be a betrayal – a kind of cheating. I explore whether monogamous relationships should forbid solo masturbation using erotica and pornography, considering two possible objections: (1) the objection that such activity is a kind of infidelity; (2) the objection that such activity involves attitudes, usually attitudes towards women that are incompatible with an equal, loving relationship. I argue that the use (...) of erotic material in solo masturbation should not count as cheating. Solo use of pornography differs significantly from interpersonal sexual activity. Thus, unlike causal interpersonal sex, it does not undermine the role of sex within the relationship. Additionally, freedom to explore sexual fantasy through masturbation is an important element of sexual autonomy. Objection (2) holds against some but not all erotic material. Sexual enjoyment of pornography that depicts, or is produced by, suffering or degradation involves a way of seeing others that has implications for the user’s relationships with others, particularly sexual relationships. However, not all erotic material involves objectionable attitudes towards others. Thus partners should allow moderate use of some types of erotica in solo-masturbation. (shrink)

An important question for proponents of non-contractive approaches to paradox is why contraction fails. Zardini offers an answer, namely that paradoxical sentences exhibit a kind of instability. I elaborate this idea using revision theory, and I argue that while instability does motivate failures of contraction, it equally motivates failure of many principles that non-contractive theorists want to maintain.

In an essay on performance-enhancing drugs, author Chuck Klosterman (2007) argues that the category of enhancers extends from hallucinogens used to inspire music to steroids used to strengthen athletes—and he criticizes those who would excuse one means of enhancement while railing against the other as a form of cheating: After the summer of 1964, the Beatles started taking serious drugs, and those drugs altered their musical performance. Though it may not have been their overt intent, the Beatles took performance-enhancing (...) drugs. And . . . absolutely no one holds it against them. No one views “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” as “less authentic” albums, despite the fact that they would not (and probably could .. (shrink)

Some theorists have developed formal approaches to truth that depend on counterexamples to the structural rules of contraction. Here, we study such approaches, with an eye to helping them respond to a certain kind of objection. We define a contractive relative of each noncontractive relation, for use in responding to the objection in question, and we explore one example: the contractive relative of multiplicative-additive affine logic with transparent truth, or MAALT. -/- .

There are well-known problems for formalist accounts of game-play with regards to cheating. Such accounts seem to be committed to cheaters being unable to win–or even play–the game, yet it seems that there are instances of cheaters winning games. In this paper, I expand the discussion of such problems by introducing cases of pre-game cheating, and see how a formalist–specifically a Suitsian–account can accommodate such problems. Specifically, I look at two (fictional) examples where the alleged game-players cheat prior (...) to a game-instance in such as a way as to cast doubt on whether the alleged game-players are truly playing the game. To escape the worries brought about by these examples of pre-game cheating, I will appeal to the concept of nested games. This concept will give us the needed tools to explain how the alleged players are cheating and how the alleged players are players. On the whole, this discussion should help illuminate some important issues with regards to cheating and rules on a Suitsian account of game-play, and help give support for formalist accounts more generally. (shrink)

In The Matter of Consciousness, in the course of his extended discussion and defense of Frank Jackson’s famous knowledge argument, Torin Alter dismisses some objections on the grounds that they are cases of cheating. Though some opponents of the knowledge argument offer various scenarios in which Mary might come to know what seeing red is like while still in the room, Alter argues that the proposed scenarios are irrelevant. In his view, the Mary case is offered to defend the (...) claim that phenomenal facts cannot be a priori deduced from physical facts. Thus, a proposed scenario constitutes an objection to the knowledge argument only if it presents a case in which Mary’s learning inside the room comes about via a priori deduction from physical facts. Call this the deducibility standard. In what follows, I’ll explore a series of relevant cases in an effort to clarify this standard. Doing so enables us to better understand how cheating should be assessed in this context and thereby also to get clearer on the argumentative dialectic surrounding the Mary case. (shrink)

A *very brief* reference guide to philosophy. There are generalizations and much left unsaid, it has grammatical issues I am sure. However, this is meant as a guide from which to reference generally, for the absolute beginner to gain access to information from which to begin. Only uploading to share it with my personal community.

Our main goal is to investigate whether the infinitary rules for the quantifiers endorsed by Elia Zardini in a recent paper are plausible. First, we will argue that they are problematic in several ways, especially due to their infinitary features. Secondly, we will show that even if these worries are somehow dealt with, there is another serious issue with them. They produce a truth-theoretic paradox that does not involve the structural rules of contraction.

The meaning of Lorentz contraction in special relativity and its connection with Bell’s spaceships parable is discussed. The motion of Bell’s spaceships is then compared with the accelerated motion of a rigid body. We have tried to write this in a simple form that could be used to correct students’ misconceptions due to conflicting earlier treatments.

One of the possible solutions of the Fermi paradox is that all civilizations go extinct because they hit some Late Great Filter. Such a universal Late Great Filter must be an unpredictable event that all civilizations unexpectedly encounter, even if they try to escape extinction. This is similar to the “Death in Damascus” paradox from decision theory. However, this unpredictable Late Great Filter could be escaped by choosing a random strategy for humanity’s future development. However, if all civilizations act randomly, (...) this could be the actual cause of universal extinction, as no one will choose the most optimal strategy. Using a meta-random strategy, where the decision to start random actions is also made randomly, solves this. (shrink)

A key source of support for the view that challenging people’s beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work. Over a series of five studies (sample sizes of N = 162, N = 283, N = 268, (...) N = 804, N = 982) (four preregistered) we tested the relationship between (1) anti-free-will prompts and free will beliefs and (2) free will beliefs and immoral behavior. Our primary task was to closely replicate the findings from Vohs and Schooler (2008) using the same or highly similar manipulations and measurements as the ones used in their original studies. Our efforts were largely unsuccessful. We suggest that manipulating free will beliefs in a robust way is more difficult than has been implied by prior work, and that the proposed link with immoral behavior may not be as consistent as previous work suggests. (shrink)

'. . . this book will be valuable to upper-division and graduate students interested in the validity of SC theories.'-PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL SCIENCE.

In The Libertarian Idea, Jan Narveson explains his interpretation of social contract theory this way: "The general idea of this theory is that the principles of morality are (or should be) those principles for directing everyone's conduct which it is reasonable for everyone to accept. They are the rules that everyone has good reason for wanting everyone to act on, and thus to internalize in himself or herself, and thus to reinforce in the case of everyone." It is plain, (...) here, that Narveson believes that social contract is to provide justification -- a foundation, in fact -- for 'the principles of morality'. The burden assumed in this essay is to examine how far Narveson has succeeded in making this foundational claim plausible. (shrink)

Contracts are common, and some influential thinkers in the “modern” period of philosophy argued that the whole of society is created and regulated by a contract. Two of the most prominent “social contract theorists” are Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704).[2] This essay explains the origins of this tradition and why the concept of a contract is illuminating for thinking about the structure of society and government.

Cheating is a growing academic and ethical concern in higher education. This article examines the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) generative chatbots for use in education and provides a review of research literature and relevant scholarship concerning the cheating-related issues involved and their implications for pedagogy. The technological “arms race” that involves cheating-detection system developers versus technology savvy students is attracting increased attention to cheating. AI has added new dimensions to academic cheating challenges as students (...) (as well as faculty and staff) can easily access powerful systems for generating content that can be presented in assignments, exams, or published papers as their own. AI methodology is also providing some emerging anti-cheating approaches, including facial recognition and water- marking. This article provides an overview of human/AI collaboration approaches and frames some educational misuses of such AI generative systems as ChatGPT and Bard as forms of “misattributed co-authorship.” As with other kinds of collaborations, the work that students produce with AI assistance can be presented in transparent and straightforward modes or (unfortunately) in opaquer and ethically-problematic ways. However, rather than just for catching or entrapping students, the emerging varieties of technological cheating-detection strategies can be used to assist students in learning how to document and attribute properly their AI-empowered as well as human-human collaborations. Construing misuses of AI generative systems as misattributed co-authorship can recognize the growing capabilities of these tools and how stressing responsible and mindful usage by students can help prepare them for a highly collaborative, AI-saturated future. (shrink)

Drugs used to provide improvement of cognitive functioning have been shown to be effective in healthy individuals. It is sometimes assumed that the use of these drugs constitutes cheating in an academic context. We examine whether this assumption is ethically sound. Beyond providing the most up-to-date discussion of modafinil use in an academic context, this contribution includes an overview of the safety of modafinil use in greater depth than previous studies addressing the issue of cheating. Secondly, we emphasize (...) two crucial, but hitherto nearly overlooked, nuances to the issues: the potential for modafinil to decrease inequality and disadvantage in academic settings, and the fact that how modafinil is used dramatically impacts its effects on health, coercion, fairness, authenticity and effort. Finally, we explicitly defend the position that there are no qualitatively morally relevant differences between modafinil use and other enhancement modalities; any such differences are in degree,... (shrink)

There appears to be a tension between two commitments in liberalism. The first is that citizens, as rational agents possessing dignity, are owed a justification for principles of justice. The second is that members of society who do not meet the requirements of rational agency are owed justice. These notions conflict because the first commitment is often expressed through the device of the social contract, which seems to confine the scope of justice to rational agents. So, contractarianism seems to (...) ignore the justice claims of the severely cognitively impaired. To solve this problem, Martha Nussbaum proposes the capabilities approach. The justifiability condition, on this approach, is met by the idea of overlapping consensus. This essay argues that overlapping consensus cannot meet liberalism’s justifiability condition, nor is it more inclusive of the cognitively impaired. Therefore, we have reason to retain the contract device and look for another way to ensure that liberalism respects the justice claims of all. (shrink)

Abstract: Cheating behaviors have been construed as a continuing and somewhat vexing issue for academic institutions as they increasingly conduct educational processes online and impose metrics on instructional evaluation. Research, development, and implementation initiatives on cheating detection have gained new dimensions in the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) applications; they have also engendered special challenges in terms of their social, ethical, and cultural implications. An assortment of commercial cheating–detection systems have been injected into educational contexts with little (...) input on the part of relevant stakeholders. This paper expands several specific cases of how systems for the detection of cheating have recently been implemented in higher education institutions in the US and UK. It investigates how such vehicles as wearable technologies, eye scanning, and keystroke capturing are being used to collect the data used for anti-cheating initiatives, often involving systems that have not gone through rigorous testing and evaluation for their validity and potential educational impacts. The paper discusses accountability- and policy-related issues concerning the outsourcing of cheating detection in institutional settings in the light of these emerging technological practices as well as student resistance against the systems involved. The practices can place students in a disempowered position. (shrink)

Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern cooperative social interaction within societies. These naturalistic accounts provide us with valuable and important insights into the foundations of human societies. However, current naturalistic theories focus mainly on how social contracts solve coordination problems in which the interests of the individual participants are aligned, not competition problems in which (...) individual interests compete with group interests. In response, I set out to build on those theories and provide a comprehensive naturalistic account of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. My central claim is that social contracts have culturally evolved to solve cooperation problems, which include both coordination and competition problems. I argue that solutions to coordination problems emerge from “within-group” dynamics, while solutions to competition problems result largely from “between-group” dynamics. (shrink)

(Early) Modern social contract theories reject the idea that legal and political institutions are grounded in an alleged natural ordering or hierarchy of human beings, and instead argue that only government by a public (and not private) authority can fulfil the idea of justice as freedom and equality for all. To be authoritative and not just powerful, governing institutions must be shared as ours in this irreducible sense. I first outline how Kant’s ideal account of rightful freedom brilliantly transforms (...) this tradition as found in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, before proposing a way to see Kant’s two-layered non-ideal theory—his accounts of human nature (“moral anthropology”) and historical societies (“the principle of politics”)—as complementing his ideal theory of rightful freedom. This enables us to envision a conception not only of rightful external freedom but of rightful human freedom in particular societies—with their histories—on planet Earth. With these arguments at hand, we can also better appreciate the importance of realizing that the four possible political conditions for Kant—anarchy, barbarism, despotism, and republic—are ideas of reason, which means that they are never perfectly realized. Hence, historical societies we are not either in the state of nature or in civil society. In addition, in historical societies founded on principles of freedom, there are pockets of injustice or pockets that are devoid of justice that can only be captured by means of one of the three political ideas that are not constitutive of the republican legal-political framework. Kant’s four ideas therefore give us more tools with which to capture the nature of different political forces and challenges facing us in our historical societies. (shrink)

Abstract: Cheating behaviors have been construed as a continuing and somewhat vexing issue for academic institutions as they increasingly conduct educational processes online and impose metrics on instructional evaluation. Research, development, and implementation initiatives on cheating detection have gained new dimensions in the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) applications; they have also engendered special challenges in terms of their social, ethical, and cultural implications. An assortment of commercial cheating–detection systems have been injected into educational contexts with little (...) input on the part of relevant stakeholders. This paper expands several specific cases of how systems for the detection of cheating have recently been implemented in higher education institutions in the US and UK. It investigates how such vehicles as wearable technologies, eye scanning, and keystroke capturing are being used to collect the data used for anti-cheating initiatives, often involving systems that have not gone through rigorous testing and evaluation for their validity and potential educational impacts. The paper discusses accountability- and policy-related issues concerning the outsourcing of cheating detection in institutional settings in the light of these emerging technological practices as well as student resistance against the systems involved. The cheating-detection practices can place students in a disempowered, asymmetrical position that is often at substantial variance with their cultural backgrounds. (shrink)

Cheating during examinations is triggered by peer influence. It makes every learner know and do what should not be done. Cheating during examinations defeats the purpose of understanding, applying and creating ideas as stipulated in the revised Bloom's taxonomy by Anderson. The study reported here was designed to delve into the reasons and aspirations of the respondents in their cheating engagement. Sixteen (16) key informants, selected using random sampling procedure among Junior and Senior High School learners of (...) Roxas National Comprehensive High School in Palawan during the months of June to October 2016, completed open-ended questionnaires and took part in the interview. NVivo software was used in the analysis of the themes that emerged from the data. This study discovered that friendship is manipulated, for it makes doing right things unacceptable and things to be avoided like cheating seem right and acceptable. The behavior about cheating during examination is deeply rooted in the culture of pakikisama (social acceptance/liking) and utang ng loob (debt of gratitude). If a learner does not share his or her answers, he or she will be labeled as walang pakisama (no concern).This paper then argues that honesty should not be just a policy; rather, honesty in this case, is the only policy. Condemning academic dishonesty must not merely rest in the enrollment forms, but by constant moral reminder and intervention of teachers who have a responsibility to hone learners' decorum on honesty and maturity. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that Polleit and Mariano (2011) are right in concluding that Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are per se unobjectionable from Rothbard’s libertarian perspective on property rights and contract theory, but that they fail to derive this conclusion properly. I therefore outline the proper explanation. In addition, though Polleit and Mariano are correct in pointing out that speculation with CDS can conceivably hurt the borrowers’ interests, they fail to grasp that this can be the case only (...) in some peculiar circumstances that I identify. In other words, they miss the bigger picture, the one outside special circumstances, in which CDS trading has the opposite effect. That is, CDS facilitate debt accumulation, including government debt accumulation. Finally, I point out how this can precipitate the collapse of fiat money regimes. An incidental goal of the analysis is to provide a better account than Polleit and Mariano of recent government interventions in and around CDS markets. (shrink)

Termination in international contracts is considered a harsh sanction that harms international trade for each breach of contract or its provisions. The interest of international trade is fulfilled in maintaining and completing performance of contract, even if with a breach rectifiable by remedy. The termination destroys the contract and results in returning goods after their dispatch in addition to the accompanying new freight and insurance expenses and administrative and health procedures necessary for the entry and exit of (...) goods and to pay then refund the price. Moreover, the goods are exposed again to damage and perishing risks. Furthermore, the international sale contract is inherently associated with other international contracts such as goods transport contract, insurance contract and documentary credit through which the price is paid. If the sale contract is terminated, its effect will apply to all other associated contracts, if not performed, which produces many issues and hardships. (shrink)

In this article I provide an overview of the moral and medical questions surrounding the use of cognitive enhancers. This discussion will be framed in light of 4 key considerations: (1) is there a difference between therapy and enhancement? (2) How safe are these interventions? (3) Is the use of nootropics cheating? (4) Would enhancers create a further divide of social inequality where only the very wealthy have access to them?

Global society issues are putting increasing pressure on both small and large organizations to communicate ethically at all levels. Achieving this requires social skills beyond the choice of language or vocabulary and relies above all on individual social responsibility. Arguments from social contract philosophy and speech act theory lead to consider a communication contract that identifies the necessary individual skills for ethical communication on the basis of a limited number of explicit clauses. These latter are pragmatically binding for (...) all partners involved and help to ensure that the ground rules of cooperative communication are observed within a group or an organization. Beyond promoting ethical communication, the communication contract clarifies how individual discursive behaviour can be constructively and ethically monitored by group leaders in business meetings. A case study which shows what may happen when ground clauses of ethical communication are violated is presented. The conclusions of the study highlights why attempting to respect the communication contract is in the best interest of all partners at all levels within any group or organization. (shrink)

Derek Parfit defended Non-Realist Cognitivism. It is an open secret that this metaethical theory is often thought at best puzzling and at worst objectionably unclear. Employing truthmaker theory, I provide an account of Non-Realist Cognitivism that dispels charges of objectionable unclarity, clarifies how to assess it, and explains why, if plausible, it would be an attractive theory. I develop concerns that the theory involves cheating into an objection that ultimately reveals Non-Realist Cognitivism faces a dilemma. Whether it can escape (...) demands further attention. In bridging metaethics and the truthmaking literature, I illustrate the importance of greater meta-metaphysical reflection in metaethics. (shrink)

Standard accuracy-based approaches to imprecise credences have the consequence that it is rational to move between precise and imprecise credences arbitrarily, without gaining any new evidence. Building on the Educated Guessing Framework of Horowitz (2019), we develop an alternative accuracy-based approach to imprecise credences that does not have this shortcoming. We argue that it is always irrational to move from a precise state to an imprecise state arbitrarily, however it can be rational to move from an imprecise state to a (...) precise state arbitrarily. (shrink)

This study will examine how the concern about one’s reputation upon getting caught cheating may influence cheating behavior.

In pornography, standard modelling contracts often require a performer to surrender rights over their public image and sexual media in perpetuity and across mediums. Under these contracts, performers are unable to determine who accesses, for what duration, and under what conditions, their sexual media. As a result, pornography has been described by some performers as a “life sentence” - a phrase which, if true, violates some strong intuitions we share about the importance of autonomy in sexual activity. Using the framework (...) of “affirmative consent,” I argue that these contracts violate performers' rights to sexual autonomy, and ought therefore to be considered objectionable. Overall, I argue that the legal regimes we create have a strong impact on people’s lives, and more important than legislating individual outcomes, the type of infrastructure we build around people’s decisions has the potential to radically empower - or disempower - those engaged in sex work. (shrink)

In his book, The Grounds of Moral Judgment, Russell Grice argues for a thesis he calls "the contract ground thesis," which connects the interest of members of a group in making a contract to the existence of an obligation and reason to abide by that contract. This thesis has been challenged by Jesse Kalin and subsequently defended by Grice. We show that Grice's defense fails--the contract ground thesis is without justification.

In this study, I demonstrated that there is a corporate social contract between firms and their host communities. The implication is that the idea of the social contract places corporate social responsibility (CSR) on a conditional pivot, whereby the host communities have to fulfil their own side of the contract in order to merit CSR projects. I examined the implication of the social contract for corrupt and unaccountable host communities. I based my analysis on two philosophical (...) frameworks, namely: one, Constructive Approach CSR (CA-CSR), and two, Restorative Approach CSR (RA-CSR). CA-CSR is hinged on the deontological and utilitarian moral frameworks, while RA-CSR is based on the restorative justice framework. Further, I developed ‘CSR Calculus’ (V = f1+n + K) to determine the value of CSR-due for a host community, in response to Milton Friedman questions of arbitrariness in the formulation of CSR projects. I also demonstrated how the CSR Calculus can be applied to determine the value of CSR owed communities by Micro, Small and Medium scale Enterprises (MSMEs). Finally, I used the ethic ‘leave a better community’ derived from the Annang proverb – Assidsip ye Akwot-kwot ete yak mfin ami afon akan mkpong (Assidsip and Akwot-kwot say make today better than yesterday) to signpost the corporate social contract and demonstrated why it is essential for every firm to commission and decommission its operations in socially responsible manner such that it can bequeath a better future society. (shrink)

As I hope to show in this paper, Fichte’s rejection of traditional social contractarian accounts of human social relations is related to his rejection of the search for a criterion, or external standard, by which we might measure our knowledge in epistemology. More specifically, Fichte’s account of the impossibility of a normative social contract (as traditionally construed) is related to his account of the impossibility of our knowing things as they might be “in themselves,” separate from and independent of (...) our own activity in knowing them. Addressing the question of whether we finite human knowers can ever transcend the limits of our own consciousness, Fichte argues that Hume was not sufficiently critical: “…the Humean system holds open the possibility that we might someday be able to go beyond the boundary of the human mind, whereas the Critical system proves that such progress is absolutely impossible, and it shows that the thought of a thing possessing existence and specific properties in itself and apart from any faculty of representation is a piece of whimsy, a pipe dream, a nonthought.” In a very real sense, then, Fichte aims to “out-Hume” Hume on the question of whether we can ever know “things-in-themselves” or an external criterion for testing our knowledge. That is, Fichte goes beyond Hume and insists on the necessary – and not merely contingent – character of our ignorance of so-called things-in-themselves (i.e., things that supposedly exist antecedent to and independent of our consciousness of them). But unlike Hume, Fichte argues that radical skepticism regarding all possible knowledge of things-in-themselves does not undermine – but actually confirms and sustains – our belief in the emancipatory power of reason. (shrink)

The psychological contract refers to the implicit and subjective beliefs regarding a reciprocal exchange agreement, predominantly examined between employees and employers. While contemporary contract research is investigating a wider range of exchanges employees may hold, such as with team members and clients, it remains silent on a rapidly emerging form of workplace relationship: employees’ increasing engagement with technically, socially, and emotionally sophisticated forms of artificially intelligent (AI) technologies. In this paper we examine social robots (also termed humanoid robots) (...) as likely future psychological contract partners for human employees, given these entities transform notions of workplace technology from being a tool to being an active partner. We first overview the increasing role of robots in the workplace, particularly through the advent of sociable AI, and synthesize the literature on human–robot interaction. We then develop an account of a human-social robot psychological contract and zoom in on the implications of this exchange for the enactment of reciprocity. Given the future focused nature of our work we utilize a thought experiment, a commonly used form of conceptual and mental model reasoning, to expand on our theorizing. We then outline potential implications of human-social robot psychological contracts and offer a range of pathways for future research. (shrink)

'Ghosting' or the unethical practice of having someone other than the student registered in the course take the student's exams, complete their assignments and write their essays has become a common method of cheating in today's online higher education learning environment. Internet-based teaching technology and deceit go hand-in-hand because the technology establishes a set of perverse incentives for students to cheat and institutions to either tolerate or encourage this highly unethical form of behavior. For students, cheating becomes an (...) increasingly attractive option as pre-digital safeguards-for instance, in-person exam proctoring requirements and face-to-face mentoring-are quietly phased out and eventually eliminated altogether. Also, as the punishments for violating academic integrity policies are relaxed, the temptation to cheat increases accordingly. For institutions, tolerating, normalizing and encouraging one type of student cheating, ghosting, improves the profitability of their online divisions by bolstering student enrolments and retention. In universities and colleges across the globe, online divisions and programs have become thriving profit centers, not because of the commonly attributed reasons (student ease, safety during health crises and convenience of taking courses online), but due to a single strategic insight: Ubiquitous opportunities for ghosting improve profit margins and maximize revenue. (shrink)

Are universities justified in trying to regulate student use of cognitive enhancing drugs? In this article I argue that they can be, but that the most appropriate kind of regulatory intervention is likely to be voluntary in nature. To be precise, I argue that universities could justifiably adopt a commitment contract system of regulation wherein students are encouraged to voluntarily commit to not using cognitive enhancing drugs. If they are found to breach that commitment, they should be penalized by, (...) for example, forfeiting a number of marks on their assessments. To defend this model of regulation, I adopt a recently-proposed evaluative framework for determining the appropriateness of enhancement in specific domains of activity, and I focus on particular existing types of cognitive enhancement drugs, not hypothetical or potential forms. In this way, my argument is tailored to the specific features of university education, and common patterns of usage among students. It is not concerned with the general ethical propriety of using cognitive enhancing drugs. (shrink)

The article presents a basic perception regarding social contract theory which is considered to be one of the most well-known and influential theories in western political philosophy. By exploring the concepts of social contract theory suggested by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, an attempt is made to reveal various features and characteristics of the natural state. The article discusses the general description of the state of nature as well as the process of establishing a social contract as (...) a means of formation of civil society. (shrink)

Social contract thought has always contained multiple and mutually conflicting lines of argument; the minimalist contractarianism so influential today represents the weaker of two main constellations of claims. I make the case for a Kantian contract theory that emphasizes the bedrock principle of consent of the governed instead of the mere heuristic device of the exit from the state of nature. Such a shift in emphasis resolves two classic difficulties: tradi- tional contract theory’s ahistorical presumption of a (...) pre-political settlement, and its impossibly high demands on citizens seeking to practice self-rule. Kant’s solutions to these problems of property rights and citizenship are found in his political works, rather than the ethical works through which Kant’s political theory is usually interpreted. (shrink)

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to establish how academic employees in technical, vocational education and training (TVET) College perceive the effects of psychological contract breach (PCB) in relations to job involvement and citizenship behaviour. Quantitative exploratory research design and a survey instrument were used to collect 170 samples from academic employees in a TVET College to share their perceptions of PCB. The findings confirm a significant (P-value .006) relationship between PCB and job involvement. There is a strong (...) indication that PCB has an effect on job involvement. The findings also revealed that there is a relationship between PCB and organisational citizenship behaviour. However, it is not significant since the (P-value was .119) in the regression analysis. These results are a consequence of academics not feeling a significant PCB, which might have explained better the relationship between PCB and organisational citizenship behaviour. Significantly, the paper established TVET College academics has a stable employer-employee relationship since there is minimal PCB. (shrink)

This essay examines the promise of the notion of modus vivendi for realist political theory. I interpret recent theories of modus vivendi as affirming the priority of peace over justice, and explore several ways of making sense of this idea. I proceed to identify two key problems for modus vivendi theory, so conceived. Normatively speaking, it remains unclear how this approach can sustain a realist critique of Rawlsian theorizing about justice while avoiding a Hobbesian endorsement of absolutism. And conceptually, the (...) theory remains wedded to a key feature of social contract theory: political order is conceived as based on agreement. This construes the horizontal tensions among individual or group agents in society as prior to the vertical, authoritative relations between authorities and their subjects. Political authority thereby appears from the start as a solution to societal conflict, rather than a problem in itself. I argue that this way of framing the issue abstracts from political experience. Instead I attempt to rethink the notion of modus vivendi from within the lived experience of political conflict, as oriented not primarily toward peace, but political survival. With this shift of perspective, the idea of modus vivendi shows us, pace Bernard Williams, that the “first political question” is not how to achieve order and stability, but rather: what can I live with? (shrink)

The constitutions of many nations have been explicitly or implicitly founded upon principles of the social contract derived from Thomas Hobbes. The Hobbesian egoism at the base of the contract fairly accurately represents the structure of market enterprise. A contractarian analysis may, then, allow for justified or rationally acceptable universal standards to which businesses should conform. This paper proposes general rational restrictions upon multi-national enterprises, and includes a critique of unjustified restrictions recently proposed by the Organization for Economic (...) Cooperation and Development (OECD). I propose restrictions that may be tighter than the OECD and international law currently demand, because reason requires that the activities of enterprises accord with standards of environmental and governmental sustainability in addition to consortium, national law and international law agreements. I argue that it is justifiable that indictments may be presented by a citizen or a government against the local arm of a multinational enterprise in response to violations committed by an arm within a different country. (shrink)