This study examined the relative effect of diversity climate dimensions captured by two measures: Mor Barak et al.’s (Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 34:82–104, 1998 ) diversity climate scale and Chrobot-Mason’s (Journal of Managerial Psychology 18:22–45, 2003 ) diversity promise fulfillment scale on professional employee of color outcomes: organizational commitment (OC) and turnover intentions. We hypothesized that the two scales would measure different aspects of diversity climate. We further hypothesized that the different climate dimensions would interactively affect the employee of (...) color outcomes. Third, we predicted that diversity climate would mediate between diversity promise fulfillment and employee of color outcomes. Finally, we hypothesized that organizational commitment would mediate the interactive effect of diversity climate dimensions on turnover intentions. Results indicated that the diversity scales each predicted unique variance in employee outcomes and that the climate dimensions interactively influenced professional of color organizational commitment and turnover intentions. We also found that the diversity climate dimension, as measured by the Mor Barak scale, mediated between diversity promise fulfillment and the outcomes. Finally, we found complete mediated moderation between the interaction of the two climate measures and turnover intentions by organizational commitment. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between psychological contract violations (PCVs) related to diversity climate and professional employee outcomes. We found that for our sample of US professionals of color including US-born African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans, employee perceptions of breach in diversity promise fulfillment (DPF), after controlling for more general organizational promise fulfillment (OPF), led to lower reported organizational commitment (OC) and higher turnover intentions (TI). Interactional justice partially mediated the relationship between DPF and outcomes. Procedural justice and (...) DPF interacted to influence OC of employees of color. For respondents who perceived a lack of DPF, moderate racial awareness was associated with greater PCV. We discuss the implications of the findings and provide directions for future research. (shrink)

Diversity scholars have emphasized the critical role of corporate leaders for ensuring the success of diversity strategic initiatives in organizations. This study reports on business school leaders’ attributions regarding the causes for and solutions to the low representation of U.S. faculty of color in business schools. Results indicatethat leaders with greater awareness of racial issues rated an inhospitable organizational culture as a more important cause and cultural change and recruitment as more important solutions to faculty of color under-representation than did (...) less racially aware respondents. Aware leaders also rated individual minority-group member responsibility for performance a less important solution than did less racially aware respondents. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Volume 52, Issue 9, August 2020, Page 928-929.

In this powerful volume, 15 leading American philosophers examine and critically reassess Douglass's significance for contemporary social and political thought. Philosophically, Douglass's work sought to establish better ways of thinking, especially in the light of his convictions about our humanity and democratic legitimacy - convictions that were culturally and historically shaped by his experience of, and struggle against, the institution of American slavery. Contributors include Bernard R. Boxill, Angela Y. Davis, Lewis R. Gordon, Leonard Harris, Tommy L. Lott, Howard (...) McGary, and John P. Pittman. (shrink)

This article aims to explain the behaviour of public intellectuals, celebrities, and media audiences in the construction of anti-emotional narratives in the online culture wars. In the investigation of how these narratives are constructed on YouTube, the article focuses on the rhetorical juxtaposition of rationality and emotionality surrounding the viral argument between public intellectual Sam Harris and Hollywood star Ben Affleck on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, uploaded to YouTube. The video is an apt example of the (...) positioning dynamics on YouTube, where an increased integration of media content with its context of reception unsettles the positioning process by which the authority of both intellectuals and celebrities is negotiated and culture war narratives constructed. In conclusion, the article reflects on the relationship between the increasingly affective nature of online communication and the simultaneous emergence of a strict dichotomy between rationality and emotionality in anti-woke culture war narratives. (shrink)

Many of our beliefs are acquired online. Online epistemic environments are replete with fake news, fake science, fake photographs and videos, and fake people in the form of trolls and social bots. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the threat that such online fakes pose to the acquisition of knowledge. I argue that fakes can interfere with one or more of the truth, belief, and warrant conditions on knowledge. I devote most of my attention to the effects of (...) online fakes on satisfaction of the warrant condition, as these have received comparatively little attention. I consider three accounts of the conditions under which fakes compromise the warrant condition. I argue for the third of these accounts, according to which the propensity of fakes to exist in an environment threatens warrant acquisition in that environment. Finally, I consider some limitations on the epistemic threat of fakes and suggest some strategies by which this threat can be mitigated. (shrink)

This book demonstrates how children's imagination makes a continuing contribution to their cognitive and emotional development.

The eighteenth century was a time of brilliant philosophical innovation in Britain. In Of Liberty and Necessity James A. Harris presents the first comprehensive account of the period's discussion of what remains a central problem of philosophy, the question of the freedom of the will. He offers new interpretations of contributions to the free will debate made by canonical figures such as Locke, Hume, Edwards, and Reid, and also discusses in detail the arguments of some less familiar writers. (...) class='Hi'>Harris puts the eighteenth-century debate about the will and its freedom in the context of the period's concern with applying what Hume calls the "experimental method of reasoning" to the human mind. His book will be of substantial interest to historians of philosophy and anyone concerned with the free will problem. (shrink)

Although he won the 1960 Nobel Prize and maintained a measure of global acclaim past this award, the poetry of Saint-John Perse has fallen into general obscurity and critical disregard outside the poet's linguistic patrimony, where he belongs primarily to a national, scholastic poetic tradition.1 Perse's appurtenance to a French national canon—and his near anonymity outside of it—both raise a variety of questions specific to Perse, though I hope that they may also have some more generic theoretical value. This essay (...) may thus be read as a case study in what is being called world literature. I map the vicissitudes…. (shrink)

At the outset of World War I - the "Great War" - Freud supported the Austro-Hungarian Empire for which his sons fought. But the cruel truths of that bloody conflict, wrought on the psyches as much as the bodies of the soldiers returning from the battlefield, caused him to rethink his stance and subsequently affected his theory: Psychoanalysis, a healing science, could tell us much about both the drive for war and the ways to undo the trauma that war inherently (...) breeds, but its principles could just as easily serve the enemy's desires to inculcate its own brand of "truth." Even a century later, psychoanalysis can still be used as much for the justifications of warfare and propaganda as it is for the defiance of and resistance to those same things. But it is in the investigation of the motives and methods behind these uses that psychoanalysis proves its greatest strength. To wit, this edited collection presents published and unpublished material by analysts, writers, and activists who have worked at the front lines of psychic life and war from various stances. Set at a point of tension and contradiction, they illustrate the paradoxical relation of psychoanalysis as both a site of resistance and healing and a necessary aspect of warmaking, propaganda, and militarism. In doing so, we venture from the home front - from the trauma of returning veterans to the APA's own complicity in CIA "black sites" - across international borders - from the treatment of women in Latin American dictatorships to the resistance to occupation in Palestine, from mind control to an ethics of responsibility. Throughout, a psychoanalytic sensibility deconstructs the very opposition that it inhabits, and seeks to reestablish psychoanalysis as the healing discipline it was conceived to be. (shrink)

During the past few decades, engineering ethics has been oriented towards protecting the public from professional misconduct by engineers and from the harmful effects of technology. This “preventive ethics” project has been accomplished primarily by means of the promulgation of negative rules. However, some aspects of engineering professionalism, such as (1) sensitivity to risk (2) awareness of the social context of technology, (3) respect for nature, and (4) commitment to the public good, cannot be adequately accounted for in terms of (...) rules, certainly not negative rules. Virtue ethics is a more appropriate vehicle for expressing these aspects of engineering professionalism. Some of the unique features of virtue ethics are the greater place it gives for discretion and judgment and also for inner motivation and commitment. Four of the many professional virtues that are important for engineers correspond to the four aspects of engineering professionalism listed above. Finally, the importance of the humanities and social sciences in promoting these virtues suggests that these disciplines are crucial in the professional education of engineers. (shrink)

Many authors hold that collectives, as well as individuals can be the subjects of obligations. Typically these authors have focussed on the obligations of highly structured groups, and of small, informal groups. One might wonder, however, whether there could also be collective obligations which fall on everyone – what I shall call ' global collective obligations '. One reason for thinking that this is not possible has to do with considerations about agency : it seems as though an entity can (...) only be the subject of obligations if it is an agent. In this paper, I try to show that the argument from agency is not a good reason for being sceptical about the existence of global collective obligations : it derives whatever plausibility it has from the idea that claims about obligation need to be addressable to some agent. My suggestion is that we should accept this principle about the addressability of obligations, but deny that the addressee of an obligation need be the subject of that obligation. The collective obligations of unstructured collections of individuals, including global collective obligations, meet the addressability requirement insofar as they require something of the individuals who make up the collective. (shrink)

In this retitled and revised version of Harris's original text Wonderwoman and Superman, the author discusses the ethics of human biotechnology and its implications relative to human evolution and destiny.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have gained a degree of prominence across recent moral enhancement literature as a possible intervention for dealing with antisocial and aggressive impulses. This is due to serotonin's purported capacity to modulate persons’ averseness to harm. The aim of this article is to argue that the use of SSRIs is not something worth getting particularly excited about as a practicable intervention for moral enhancement purposes, and that the generally uncritical enthusiasm over serotonin's potential as a moral (...) enhancer is a consequence of the paucity of viable options for envisaging practicable moral enhancement interventions. While there are many conceptual issues raised by the idea of moral enhancement generally, and by the idea of serotonin as a morally affective agent, the aim here is to look at practical concerns. It is argued that SSRIs do not, nor cannot in the reasonably foreseeable future, be made to work as a reliably safe or reliably effective means for moral enhancement, even within the very limited remit of treating “reactive” aggression. SSRIs might be effective as a limited and partial mental health intervention (even this is questionable), but not as a generally effective moral enhancement technology. (shrink)

Are the properties of communicative acts grounded in the intentions with which they are performed, or in the conventions that govern them? The latest round in this debate has been sparked by Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone (2015), who argue that much more of communication is conventional than we thought, and that the rest isn’t really communication after all, but merely the initiation of open-ended imaginative thought. I argue that although Lepore and Stone may be right about many of the (...) specific cases they discuss, their big-picture, conventionalist conclusions don’t follow. My argument focuses on four phenomena that present challenges to conventionalist accounts of communication: ambiguity, indirect communication, communication by wholly unconventional means, and convention acquisition. (shrink)

In the Western philosophic tradition, virtue theory has rarely been extended to the political realm. There is a long tradition that advocates the role of virtue in ethical theory, but the implications of this tradition for political theory have largely been neglected. However, in the Chinese tradition, we very early on see the use of virtue-based theories not only in ethics but in political thought as well. Indeed, one of the most sophisticated early Confucian philosophers, Xúnzǐ 荀子 (fl. 298–238 BCE), (...) believes that a virtue-based political theory is a natural extension of his virtue-based ethical theory. At the same time, a prominent anti-Confucian political philosopher, Hán Fēizǐ 韓非子, was diametrically opposed to allowing virtue, or, indeed, any other moral quality, serve as the basis for political theory, arguing instead that a clear set of laws should serve as the fundamental basis. Therefore, this tradition offers us a very clear debate on the problems and promise of a virtue politics. This debate is not only of historical interest, however. To the extent that contemporary philosophers interested in the possibility of extending virtue theory to the political realm take themselves to be prescribing for everyone, as opposed to simply for those within their own cultural background, they must be willing to take into account other traditions that have wrestled with similar issues. In early China we not only see a version of virtue politics, we also see a sophisticated debate about its viability. And, while Xúnzǐ himself may not be capable of answering all of Hán Fēizǐ’s objections, analyzing this debate affords us the opportunity to see how and where a particular conception of virtue politics succeeds and fails, providing contemporary philosophers not only with a set of problems that must be overcome but also with a promising way forward. (shrink)

`Fundamentalism' is a label used often pejoratively of religious conservatism. Evangelicals are growing in number and power around the world and are frequently regarded as fundamentalist. This volume examines fundamentalism as a mentality which has greatly affected evangelicalism, but which some evangelicals now wish to leave behind.

Traditional ecocentric ethics relies on an ecology that emphasizes the stability and integrity of ecosystems. Numerous ecologists now focus on natural systems that are less clearly characterized by these properties. We use the elimination and restoration of wolves in Yellowstone to illustrate troubles for traditional ecocentric ethics caused by ecological models emphasizing instability in natural systems. We identify several other problems for a stability-integrity based ecocentrism as well. We show how an ecocentric ethic can avoid these difficulties by emphasizing the (...) value of the wildness of natural systems and we defend wildness value from a rising tide of criticisms. (shrink)

Critics of virtue reliabilism allege that the view cannot account for testimonial knowledge, as the acquisition of such knowledge is creditable to the testifier, not the recipient's cognitive abilities. I defend virtue reliabilism by attending to empirical work concerning human abilities to detect sincerity, certainty, and seriousness through bodily cues and properties of utterances. Then, I consider forms of testimony involving books, newspapers, and online social networks. I argue that, while discriminatory abilities directed at bodily cues and properties of utterances (...) are impotent in the face of such testimony, alternative abilities facilitate the acquisition of knowledge from these sources. (shrink)

The defensibility of the extended mind thesis (EMT) is often thought to hinge on the possibility of extended selves. I argue that the self cannot extend and consider the ramifications of this finding, especially for EMT. After an overview of EMT and the supposed cruciality of the extended self to the defensibility of the former thesis, I outline several lines of argument in support of the possibility of extended selves. Each line of argument appeals to a different account of diachronic (...) personal identity. I argue that no such argument for extended selves succeeds, as no account of diachronic personal identity is both plausible and supports the view that the self can extend. Next, I consider three objections that, if successful, would undercut the preceding argument that the self cannot extend. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of the conclusion that the self cannot extend, including the prospects for EMT. (shrink)

When children are too young to make their ownautonomous decisions, decisions have to be madefor them. In certain contexts we allow parentsand others to make these decisions, and do notinterfere unless the decision clearly violatesthe best interest of the child. In othercontexts we put a priori limits on whatkind of decisions parents can make, and/or whatkinds of considerations they have to take intoaccount. Consent to medical research currentlyfalls into the second group mentioned here. Wewant to consider and ultimately reject one (...) ofthe arguments put forward for putting medicalresearch into the second category. We willargue that some objections to children'sparticipation in research are either based onan implausibly restrictive conception of whatis in fact in the child's best interests orthat there is an implicit and false premisehidden in this argument; i.e., the premise thatour children have so deeply fallen into moralturpitude that we must assume that they wouldnot want to fulfill their moral obligations,or, that they will grow up to be morallydeficient and will then wish not to have actedwell while a child. (shrink)

An argument that moral functioning is immeasurably complex, mediated by biology but not determined by it. Throughout history, humanity has been seen as being in need of improvement, most pressingly in need of moral improvement. Today, in what has been called the beginnings of “the golden age of neuroscience,” laboratory findings claim to offer insights into how the brain “does” morality, even suggesting that it is possible to make people more moral by manipulating their biology. Can “moral bioenhancement”—using technological or (...) pharmaceutical means to boost the morally desirable and remove the morally problematic—bring about a morally improved humanity? In The Myth of the Moral Brain, Harris Wiseman argues that moral functioning is immeasurably complex, mediated by biology but not determined by it. Morality cannot be engineered; there is no such thing as a “moral brain.” Wiseman takes a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, drawing on insights from philosophy, biology, theology, and clinical psychology. He considers philosophical rationales for moral enhancement, and the practical realities they come up against; recent empirical work, including studies of the cognitive and behavioral effects of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine; and traditional moral education, in particular the influence of religious thought, belief, and practice. Arguing that morality involves many interacting elements, Wiseman proposes an integrated bio-psycho-social approach to the consideration of moral enhancement. Such an approach would show that, by virtue of their sheer numbers, social and environmental factors are more important in shaping moral functioning than the neurobiological factors with which they are interwoven. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that a well-known objection to subsistence rights developed by Onora O'Neill - namely, that such rights would generate obligations without an obligation-bearer, can be answered if we take such rights to impose an obligation on the world's population, taken collectively.

There is a wide array of contemporary arenas toward which the ideas of Han Fei may be directed. One of these is the arenas where Han Fei may potentially be of use is that of corporate and business ethics. Even if we disagree with Han Fei’s pessimistic assumptions about human dispositions and the plausibility of moral cultivation, we may find such a framework useful for analyzing how businesses, corporations, indeed any sort of bureaucracy can and should function. Milton Friedman was (...) of course famous for his claim that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business―to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.” On this account, businesses not only do, but should act in a fashion which bears stark similarities to how Han Fei believes that human dispositions lead them to act at the individual level. He then draws a range of conclusions from this, and it is worth exploring the extent to which these conclusions are useful as we determine how to analyze, evaluate, organize, and limit corporate behavior. (shrink)

The standard paradigm for mental causation is a person’s acting for a reason. Something happens - she intentionally φ’s - the occurrence of which we explain by citing a relevant belief or desire. In the present context, I simply take for granted the following two conditions on the appropriateness of this explanation. First, the agent φ’s _because_ she believes/desires what we say she does, where this is expressive of a _causal_ dependence.1 Second, her believing/desiring this gives her a _reason_ for (...) φ-ing: recognizing that she has this belief/desire makes her φ-ing intelligible as rational in the light of her other attitudes and circumstances. A further condition must be met, though, if this is to be a genuine psychological explanation, a case of her acting _for_ the reason in question. Consider the following example of Davidson’s (1973, p. 79). An exhausted climber is desperate to rid herself of the weight and danger of holding her partner on a rope; and her sudden realization that simply letting go would achieve this so unnerves her that her grip loosens slightly and he falls. Her releasing him causally depends upon her having this belief and desire, which provide _a_ reason for doing what she does. But this is not _why_ she does it: it would be at best misleading to say that she dropped him, intentionally, because she was fed up with holding his weight, or because she thought that she might otherwise fall. Her letting go does not depend upon her having these reasons in the right way. The reason-giving relation is causally irrelevant. If we are to explain a person’s acting _for_ a reason, then her doing. (shrink)

We clarify aspects of our Dynamic Functional Model of Jealousy in response to D’Arms and Stets. Our model proposes that jealousy is an evolved motivational state that arises over threat by a rival to one’s relationship or some aspect of one’s relationship. The formation or loss of relationships rarely occurs instantaneously. Therefore, we argue that jealousy, whose goal is to remove or reduce the rival threat, can occur over a longer time course than is often assumed in theories of specific (...) emotions. We further suggest that other emotions such as grief and fear also can occur over extended periods. This raises challenges for emotion theories that assume that emotions must be short-lived. (shrink)

A distillation of the author's masterful Hegel's Ladder, this lucid introduction to Hegel's thought articulates the conceptual unity of the Phenomenology as well as the structure of Hegel's system and the place of the Phenomenology within it.

The story of Anna is a brief description of a faithful prophetess which is consciously paired with the previous and more developed narrative of Simeon. Hannah’s story is significant to the Lukan Gospel and yet her voice, which men and women visiting the temple heard repeatedly, is not articulated by Luke. She has been the topic of much research, in as much as three verses in their context can provide, while no one has sought to let Hannah speak for herself. (...) This article aims to do this by exploring her story within the Lukan narrative, considering prophetesses in the Old Testament, and echoing the dynamics of the Jewish story of Judith with which she is intertextually paired. (shrink)

Wherever a government or state is concerned with the welfare of its citizens, there will probably also exist policies which compel the individual citizen to undertake or abstain from activities which affect that citizen alone. The set of theories behind such policies is collectively known as ‘paternalism’. It is not hard to understand why this term has developed strong pejorative overtones. Policies of this type appear to offend a fundamental tenet of liberal societies: namely, that the individual is best placed (...) to know what is in his or her interests. Paternalistic policies imply, and are concerned with correcting, failures of precisely this kind of judgement. And yet, at the same time, there is a popular consensus that compelling people to wear a seat belt when driving a car is a reasonable restriction of personal liberty. Paternalism may be difficult to accept in principle, but it is equally difficult to avoid in practice. Not surprisingly, the literature reveals a long heritage of debate in a wide range of academic disciplines. This debate reveals a failure to make progress in two areas in particular. First, analyses of paternalism often confuse policies which are actually concerned with correcting failures of market exchange — in particular, those concerned with insufficient or imperfect information — with those which are genuinely paternalistic. One objective of this paper will be to clarify the difference between these two kinds of policy. (shrink)