This paper presents the results of a study of the effect of a business ethics course in enhancing the ability of students to recognize ethical issues. The findings show that compared to students who do not complete such a course, students enrolled in a business ethics course experience substantial improvement in that ability.

Alston begins his exposition of the realist conception of truth in chapter 1 with a roughly Aristotelian formulation: “A statement is true if and only if what the statement says to be the case actually is the case”. This condition has the drawback that it defines truth via illocutionary acts; yet, as Alston argues, propositions are the most basic truth-bearers. Alston therefore turns to the universalized T-schema for a condition that characterizes the truth of propositions without mentioning illocutionary acts: “ (...) The proposition that p is true iff p”, where “” is a substitutional rather than objectual quantifier over propositions. Later Alston avers that this account of truth is equivalent to another that is overtly realist in characterizing truth in terms of facts, a minimalist correspondence theory: “ The proposition that p is true iff it is a fact that p”. (shrink)

A great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the function- al roles of intentions in intentional action. In this paper we sketch and defend a position on this issue while attacking a provocative alternative. Our position has its roots in a cybernetic theory of purposive behavior and is only part of the larger task of understanding all goal-directed behavior. Indeed, a unified model of goal-directed behavior, with appropriate modifications for different types of systems, is a long-range (...) ambition. (shrink)

Assume that epistemic justification has a cognitive function and that a belief's being justified is not just its being caused by the appropriate information (for this property of the belief may be cognitively impenetrable). What is the function of epistemic justification? it cannot be to actualize knowledge-The belief's being caused by appropriate information alone does that! so what is its function? I suggest it is to cause us to believe and/or take action.

This chapter contains sections titled: Cognition as Information Processing, as Computation, and as Abiding in the Meaningful Operationalism Is This Merely a Terminological Issue? Conclusion.

A college-level introductory text in Christian social ethics that combines theory, cases, and analysis.

The Scientific Attitude presents a systematic account of the cognitive and social features of science. The work is unique in its attempt to understand science in terms of day-to-day practice. The book goes beyond the traditional description of science, which focuses on method and logic, to characterize the scientific attitude as a way of looking at the world.

This paper is a critical discussion of a recent article by Bas van Fraassen in which he suggests the following view: we should admit that we have no explanation of the EPR correlations, but refuse to consider the correlations as mysterious nevertheless. We shall focus on just three of the claims made by van Fraassen in support of this view. The three claims are these:The EPR correlations cannot be explained by signals being transmitted from one component of an EPR compound (...) to the other.There is, in the EPR situation, no empirically verifiable action at a distance.The demand for an explanation of the EPR correlations is similar to the Aristotelian demand of the post-Newtonian proponents of the law of inertia to explain what keeps a body moving if there are no forces impressed on it. (shrink)

Social epistemology may be defined as the conceptual and normative study of the social dimensions of knowledge. It studies the bearing of social relations, interests, roles, and institutions – what I will term “social conditions” – on the conceptual and normative conditions of knowledge. It differs from the sociology of knowledge in being a conceptual and normative, and not primarily empirical, study, and in limning the necessary and not merely the contingent social conditions of knowledge. The central question of social (...) epistemology is whether, and to what extent, the conditions of knowledge include social conditions. Is knowledge a property of knowers in isolation from their social setting (and in what sense of “isolation”), or does it involve a relation between knowers and their social circumstances? This question can take various forms and admit diverse answers, depending on the kinds of knowers, knowledge, and social relations we ask about. (shrink)

The complex structure of the tragic aspects of globalization has been accounted for in extant literature. What remains unclear is how deglobalization, isolationism and all the radically disruptive movements and politics in-between will shape transnational corporations’ organizational practices. The purpose of this study is to interrogate and problematize the implications of anarchic ‘globalisolationism’ vis-à-vis the atlas of insurrection and the TNCs’ global responsibility towards human-centric management practices. We situate our analysis in the heavily politicized and contested discursive space of emergent (...) global geopolitical and environmental tensions and the global quest to reclaim dignity, freedoms, right to resources and decisions—stakeownership. ‘Globalisolationism’ is conceptualized as a radically non-compromising coexistence of globalization and isolationism by design, aided by new information technologies, reactivated mass consciousness and slack political resources. It is characterized by the radical pursuit of new deals within the global geopolitical and economic order; renegotiation of existing deals for resource appropriation and democratic space for the marginalized; the collapse of the old political order via auto-implosion as a beneficial constraint; and the defence of the status quo in global resource and environmental governance due to ‘translocal’ insurrection. Therefore, the paper suggests how TNCs’ current modus operandi could be transformed into responsible human/environment-centric organisational practices to accommodate emerging sociopolitical and environmental challenges. It further highlights the implications for novel game-changing policies and political action by ‘subaltern’ societies and their metamorphosis from victims of planetary vandalism to stakeowners with sovereignty over their resources. (shrink)

The main claim of the paper is that there are irreducibly social agents that intentionally perform social actions. It argues, first, that there are social attitudes ascribable to social agents and not to the individuals involved. Second, that social agents, not only individual agents, are capable of what Weber called “subjectively understandable action.” And, third, that although action (if not merely mental) presumes an agent’s moving her body in various ways, actions do not consist of such movements, and hence not (...) only individual persons but social groups are genuine agents. We should be pluralists about individuation, rejecting both individualism and collectivism by granting that social agency is neither more nor less ultimate, well-founded, or basic than non-social agency. (shrink)

Business ethics in the new millennium will confront both new and old questions that are being transformed by the changed pace and direction of human evolution. These questions embrace human nature, values, inquiring methods, technological change, geopolitics, natural disasters, and the moral role of business in all of these. The emergence and acceptance of technosymbolic phenomena may signal a slow transition of carbon-based human life toward greater dependence upon silicon-based virtualities across a wide range ofhuman possibilities. The resultant moral issues (...) call for a renewal and redefinition of business ethics theories and methods. (shrink)

Measured against the gloomy pre-COVID-19 predictions, Africa has fared far better than most regions in managing the pandemic. This much, however, has received less attention. This paper answers the question: how have the new rituals of self determination in public health affected the successful management of COVID-19 in Africa, and how can the continent and the rest of the world build on such models/lessons in the post-pandemic era? I employ emancipatory theorising in reviewing literature on approaches to governance of COVID-19. (...) The rationale is to empower the grassroots and to accentuate the urgency for a decolonized local ownership of the governance of all public health crises. I argue that while traditional international cooperation is necessary for additional resource and expertise from the global North for sustainable health, the political will of Southern governments remains fundamental for any extraordinary success due to its grassroots/community orientation towards non-pharmaceutical interventions and initial pre-emptive rituals. The novelty in this paper is that it lays bare the ignored African responses and lessons and reveals how to harness protective communitarian ethos in solving future crises. The paper further provides population health as an ‘immune system’ policy framework for explaining and predicting how a scientific and human-centrered grassroots leadership can yield optimal outcomes in any future crisis. (shrink)

Taking as his starting-point the emerging scientific view of the universe as a free, unpredictable, self-ordering evolutionary process in which human cultural history plays a leading part, Turner (arts and humanities, U. of Texas at Dallas) ...

I argue that, because of scarcity, the right to life cannot imply an obligation on others to save the life of the right-holder, and that collectivising resources for health care not only ensures that resources are used inefficiently and inappropriately but also removes from people the authority to make decisions for themselves about matters of health, life and death.

This chapter contains sections titled: Induction and probability Philosophical logic Ethics, norms, and values Philosophy of action Philosophy of mind Wittgenstein Humanism.