Philosophers of the social sciences are increasingly convinced that macro-and micro-explanations are complementary. Whereas macro-explanations are broad, micro-explanations are deep. I distinguish between weak and strong complementarity: Strongly complementary explanations improve one another when integrated, weakly complementary explanations do not. To demonstrate the explanatory autonomy of different levels of explanation, explanatory pluralists mostly presuppose the weak form of complementarity. By scrutinizing the notions of explanatory depth and breadth, I argue that macro- and micro-accounts of the same phenomenon are more often (...) strongly complementary. This invites a revision of the pluralist position in which integration promotes explanatory progress. Key Words: explanatory pluralism • social science • explanatory depth • explanatory breadth • mechanism. (shrink)

Leibniz's dispute with Newton over the physico-mathematical theories expounded in the Principia Mathematica have long been identified as a crucial episode in the history of science. Dr. Bertoloni Meli examines several hitherto unpublished manuscripts in Leibniz's own hand illustrating his first reading of and reaction to Newton's Principia. Six of the most important manuscripts are here edited for the first time. Contrary to Leibniz's own claims, this new evidence shows that he had studied Newton's masterpiece before publishing An Essay on (...) the Causes of Celestial Motions. This article, representing his response to Newton, is included here in English translation. Dr. Bertoloni Meli analyses the important implications of this episode on a variety of themes ranging from priority claims to the mathematization of nature in the seventeenth century. Besides providing a careful study of Leibniz's style and strategy, the author examines how our perception of Newton's achievement is affected and the reception of the rival theories by the mathematical community around 1700. "Bertoloni's book provides a very detailed and deep analysis of Leibniz's calculus and dynamics by focusing on a consistent and important set of previously unknown manuscripts..." Niccolo Guicciardini, Universita de Bologna "...Equivalence and Priority is a major contribution to our understanding of the development of mathematical physics in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century." Daniel Garber, University of Chigago. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Caroline, Leibniz, and ClarkeD. Bertoloni Meli*The papers which passed between Leibniz and Clarke from 1715 to 1716 have long been considered classics in the history of science and philosophy, attracting a large number of scholarly works. Their exchanges, consisting of ten letters, five by Leibniz and five by Clarke, ended with Leibniz’s death in November 1716. 1 The letters deal with issues such as God’s role in the universe, (...) the notion of miracles, the cause of gravity, and space and time. The difficulties in interpreting the texts induced most, if not all, editors to present Leibniz’s and Clarke’s papers together with other writings to provide a context for the dispute and to elucidate the most obscure passages. This tradition was inaugurated by Samuel Clarke himself, who included in his editio princeps a number of explanatory footnotes, an appendix with passages from Leibniz’s printed works, and additional epistolary exchanges between himself and others on liberty and necessity, all with appropriate cross-references. 2 Later editors made a different selection of explanatory material, emphasizing different contexts and aspects of the dispute.The context I have selected for this essay centers on Caroline of Ansbach, Princess of Wales, her life and contacts with Leibniz prior to her departure for London, and their correspondence before and during the dispute with Clarke. [End Page 469] Portions of this correspondence can be found in the editions by H.G. Alexander and André Robinet, but the letters on which I shall spend more time are curiously excluded. They can be found among Leibniz’s political and state papers edited at the end of last century by Onno Klopp, and only in part in those edited by John M. Kemble, and in the recent German edition by Volmar Schüller. 3 The reader unaware of Caroline’s life and intellectual horizon may well wonder why Leibniz and Clarke went on relentlessly, month after month, debating in letters addressed to her whether space is the sensorium of God, dissecting the notion of miracle, and arguing about God’s role in the world. I hope to show that there are several reasons for paying attention to Caroline. The text which has become known as “Leibniz’s first paper” was in fact an extract of a letter to Caroline, not intended for Clarke, belonging to an important exchange with the Princess of Wales. Caroline engaged in a dispute with Clarke, passed the extract of Leibniz’s letter to him, and sent Clarke’s reply to Leibniz together with a request for help. Thus Leibniz’s “first paper” ought to be seen as part of his correspondence with Caroline. Later papers between Leibniz and Clarke went through Caroline.The Princess of Wales was not just a convenient address for the correspondence; nor was she a spectator uninterested in such an intellectual confrontation. She was involved in the dispute by arguing with Clarke and even with Newton, exchanging opinions with Leibniz, and functioning as an arbiter and moderator. Her presence helped shape the style and contents of the letters, and characterizes the genre to which the correspondence belongs. This is a complex issue because of the composite nature of the exchanges: on the one hand we have Leibniz’s letters to both Caroline and Clarke, on the other we have Caroline’s and Clarke’s letters to Leibniz, and Clarke’s discussions with Caroline. Clearly the standard label “Leibniz-Clarke correspondence” does not capture all levels of the exchanges. Moreover, in order to appreciate Caroline’s status in London it is worth recalling that the wife of George I, Sophie Dorothea, remained in Germany, secluded in the Castle of Ahlden. 4 Without a Queen, the Princess of Wales was the highest female royal. As an example of her influence, it was widely believed at the time that the election of William Wake as Archbishop of Canterbury in December 1715 was due to his close contacts with Caroline. At the time of the dispute Wake, who was a close friend of Clarke, neglected his pastoral duties as Bishop of Lincoln in order to be close to Caroline, with whom he held daily meetings. Thus Caroline was an... (shrink)

This paper defends Musical Stage Theory as a novel account of the ontology of musical works. Its main claim is that a musical work is a performance. The significance of this argument is twofold. First, it demonstrates the availability of an alternative, and ontologically tenable, view to well-established positions in the current debate on musical metaphysics. Second, it shows how the revisionary approach of Musical Stage Theory actually provides a better account of the ontological status of musical works.

Tradução de Murilo Leite Pereira Neto e revisão técnica da tradução de Vitor Sartori. O Artigo foi publicado originalmente em Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung. Neue Folge 2000, sob o título Wer schrieb den Artikel „Juristen-Sozialismus“? Probleme der Autorschaftsbegründung bei der Bearbeitung für Band I/31 der MEGA-2. O texto original pode ser acessado em: https://marxforschung.de/2016/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/BzMEF_NF20_R.-Merkel-Melis_S.-86-94.pdf.

This research responds to urgent calls to fill knowledge gaps on COVID-19 in communicating social distancing messages to the public in the most convincing ways. The authors explore the effectiveness of framing social distancing messages around prosocial vs. self-interested appeals in driving message compliance and helping behavior. The results show that when a message emphasizes benefits for everyone in society, rather than solely for the individual, citizens find the message more persuasive to engage in social distancing, and also more motivating (...) to help others. The results further demonstrate that the proposed effects are higher for individuals who have a lower locus of control and lower fear of coronavirus as prosocial messages lead them to feel a joint responsibility in protecting from the pandemic. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed. (shrink)

Starting from the works by Aselli on the milky veins and Harvey on the motion of the heart and the circulation of the blood, the practice of vivisection witnessed a resurgence in the early modern period. I discuss some of the most notable cases in the century spanning from Aselli’s work to the investigations of fluid pressure in plants and animals by Stephen Hales. Key figures in my study include Johannes Walaeus, Jean Pecquet, Marcello Malpighi, Reinier de Graaf, Richard Lower, (...) Anton Nuck, and Anton de Heide. Although vivisection dates from antiquity, early modern experimenters expanded the range of practices and epistemic motivations associated with it, displaying considerable technical skills and methodological awareness about the problems associated with the animals being alive and the issue of generalizing results to humans. Many practitioners expressed great discomfort at the suffering of the animals; however, many remained convinced that their investigations were not only indispensable from an epistemic standpoint but also had potential medical applications. Early modern vivisection experiments were both extensive and sophisticated and cannot be ignored in the literature of early modern experimentation or of experimentation on living organisms across time. (shrink)

Numerical tables are important objects of study in a range of fields, yet they have been largely ignored by historians of science. This paper contrasts and compares ways in which numerical tables were used by Galileo and Mersenne, especially in the Dialogo and Harmonie Universelle. I argue that Galileo and Mersenne used tables in radically different ways, though rarely to present experimental data. Galileo relied on tables in his work on error theory in day three of the Dialogo and also (...) used them in a very different setting in the last day of the Discorsi. In Mersenne's case they represent an important but so far unrecognized feature of his notion of universal harmony. I conclude by presenting a classification of different ways in which tables were used within the well-defined disciplinary and temporal boundaries of my research. In doing so, however, I provide a useful tool for extending similar investigations to broader domains. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroscience have paved the way to innovative applications that cognitively augment and enhance humans in a variety of contexts. This paper aims at providing a snapshot of the current state of the art and a motivated forecast of the most likely developments in the next two decades. Firstly, we survey the main neuroscience technologies for both observing and influencing brain activity, which are necessary ingredients for human cognitive augmentation. We also compare and contrast such technologies, as their (...) individual characteristics (e.g., spatio-temporal resolution, invasiveness, portability, energy requirements and cost) influence their current and future role in human cognitive augmentation. Secondly, we chart the state of the art on neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation, keeping an eye both on the applications that already exist and those that are emerging or are likely to emerge in the next two decades. Particularly, we consider applications in the areas of communication, cognitive enhancement, memory, attention monitoring/enhancement, situation awareness and complex problem solving, and we look at what fraction of the population might benefit from such technologies and at the demands they impose in terms of user training. Thirdly, we briefly review the ethical issues associated with current neuroscience technologies. These are important because they may differentially influence both present and future research on (and adoption of) neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation: an inferior technology with no significant ethical issues may thrive while a superior technology causing widespread ethical concerns may end up being outlawed. Finally, based on the lessons learned in our analysis, using past trends and considering other related forecasts, we attempt to forecast the most likely future developments of neuroscience technology for human cognitive augmentation and provide informed recommendations for promising future research and exploitation avenues. (shrink)

If what is morally right or wrong were ultimately a function of our opinions, then even such reprehensible actions as genocide and slavery would be morally right, had we approved of them. Many moral philosophers find this conclusion objectionably permissive, and to avoid it they posit a moral reality that exists independently of what anyone thinks. The notion of an independent moral reality has been subjected to meticulous metaphysical, epistemological and semantic criticism, but it is hardly ever examined from a (...) moral point of view. In this essay I offer such a critique. I argue that the appeal to an independent moral reality as a ground for moral obligations constitutes a substantive moral mistake. However, I do not conclude from this that we must therefore embrace the opposite view that moral truths are ultimately dependent on our attitudes. Rather, I suggest that we reject both of these views and answer the classic meta-ethical question “Is what we morally ought to do ultimately a function of our actual attitudes, or determined independently of them?” with Neither. (shrink)

This article explores the state of the art in relation to the theme of living and working together in organizations and proposes a new theoretical model. A thorough examination of literature highlights that there are almost no works specifically coping with this theme, defining its theoretical perspective and specifying the choice of proposed indicators. Several, instead, are the works indirectly dealing with living and working together in organizations, mostly considered equivalent to the quality of interpersonal relationships, or developed starting from (...) the theme of diversity and conflict. In reference to the social context, an important defining effort was carried out by Renzo Carli, who defines living together [convivenza in Italian] as the symbolic component of a social relationship, generated by three components: belonging systems, strangers and rules of the game. Living together means integrating these three elements of a relationship in order to create innovative products. This article proposes a... (shrink)

This essay explores the collections of Observationes, whether medicae or chirurgicae, published in Amsterdam from about 1640 to about 1690, or from Nicolaas Tulp to Frederik Ruysch. Since many Observationes were illustrated, I pay special attention to the role of images, with special emphasis on those representing diseased states. The works by Gerardus Blasius appear especially informative about contemporary practices including clinical teaching, physical examinations, postmortems, collecting, and visual representation.

While growing empirical evidence suggests a continuity between human and non-human psychology, many philosophers still think that only humans can act and form beliefs rationally. In this paper, we challenge this claim. We first clarify the notion of rationality. We then focus on the rationality of beliefs and argue that, in the relevant sense, humans are not the only rational animals. We do so by first distinguishing between unreflective and reflective responsiveness to epistemic reasons in belief formation and revision. We (...) argue that unreflective responsiveness is clearly within the reach of many animals. We then defend that a key demonstration of reflective responsiveness would be the ability to respond to undermining defeaters. We end by presenting some empirical evidence that suggests that some animal species are capable of processing these defeaters, which would entail that even by the strictest standards, humans are not the only rational animals. (shrink)

The phenomenon of interactive human kinds, namely kinds of people that undergo change in reaction to being studied or theorised about, matters not only for the reliability of scientific claims, but also for its wider, sometimes harmful effects at the group or societal level, such as contributing to negative stigmas or reinforcing existing inequalities. This paper focuses on the latter aspect of interactivity and argues that scientists studying interactive human kinds are responsible for foreseeing harmful effects of their research and (...) for devising ways of mitigating them. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Beitrag setzt die Überlegungen eines Forschungsentwurfs fort, dessen erster Teil im Band 63/2 dieser Zeitschrift erschien. Die historische Formel des sog. ›Disjunktionsprinzps‹ entwickelt Panofsky u.a. in dem 1944 im Kenyon Review erschienenen Artikel Renaissance and Renascences. Die grundsätzliche Mobilität antiker Kulturelemente, die er seiner Formel zuschreibt, impliziert einen bei ihm bisher unbenannten kulturtheoretischen Zugang mit deutlicher Nähe zum ethnologischen Modell der Diffusion. Ausgehend davon entwirft Panofsky mittels einer kulturmorphologischen Vorgehensweise ein transepochales Modell kultureller Tradierung. Dies ermöglicht es ihm, (...) seine Vorstellung einer hierarchischen Gliederung menschlicher (Kultur‑)Epochen am Beispiel der Antikenrezeption zu festigen. Um sich den kulturtheoretischen Implikationen in Panofskys Ausführungen zu nähern, sollen hier jene Stationen beleuchtet werden, die Panofskys intellektuellen Horizont möglicherweise mitgeformt haben – so z.B. die Prägung durch Aby Warburg, der seine Ausbildung in Bonn u.a. unter der Lehre Karl Lamprechts absolvierte. Zum anderen wird Panofskys Argumentation mit den Ideen deutscher Diffusionisten verglichen. Die vergleichende Methode offenbart nicht nur erstmalig deutliche Analogien, sondern zeigt, wie Panofsky mittels Antikenrezeption eine spezifische Vorstellung von der menschlichen Kulturgeschichte vorgibt. The article continues the considerations of a research draft, the first part of which was published in volume 63/2 of this journal. Panofsky develops the historical formula of the socalled ›principle of disjunction‹ in the article ›Renaissance and Renascences‹ published in the Kenyon Review in 1944. The fundamental mobility of ancient cultural elements, which he ascribes to his formula, implies a previously unnamed cultural-theoretical approach with a clear proximity to the ethnological model of diffusion. On this basis, Panofsky uses a cultural morphological approach to design a transepochal model of cultural transmission. This enables him to consolidate the idea of a hierarchical structure of human (cultural) epochs using the example of the reception of antiquity. In order to approach the cultural-theoretical implications in Panofsky’s remarks, those stations that may have shaped Panofsky’s intellectual horizon will be examined – e.g. the influence of Aby Warburg, who completed his education in Bonn under the teachings of Karl Lamprecht, among others. On the other hand, Panofsky’s argumentation is compared with the ideas of German diffusionists. The comparative method not only reveals clear analogies for the first time, but also shows how Panofsky uses the reception of antiquity to provide a specific idea of human cultural history. (shrink)

Duranti gli anni della _Querelle des femmes_ si è assistito ad un’importante crescita di testi in difesa o in detrazione della causa femminile. Una delle caratteristiche principali di questa tendenza letteraria risiede nelle reciproche relazioni che le opere stabiliscono tra loro, attraverso una fitta rete di richiami intertestuali. Il Dialogo _Della Dignità e della nobiltà delle donne_ (1624) dello scrittore marchigiano Cristoforo Bronzini aderisce appieno alla pratica intertestuale che mette a servizio della memoria storico-culturale. Nel presente articolo si analizzano i (...) rapporti intertestuali del trattato seicentesco con opere di scrittrici come Lucrezia Marinella, Moderata Fonte ed Isabella Cervoni, mettendo in rilievo le diverse funzioni che l’intertestualità adempie nei testi della _Querelle des femmes_. (shrink)

This paper explores how a new theory on the ontology of musical works, Musical Stage Theory, can address the problem of change in musical works. A natural consequence of the ontological framework of this theory is that musical works change intrinsically through a change in the sonic-structural properties of performances. From this a surprising consequence follows: everyone can change a musical work. Still, it seems that some changes matter more than others. The article offers a revisionary reply to this concern (...) by arguing that normative change is not a change in the ontological nature of the work but rather in its authenticity conditions. (shrink)

In a recent article, Hayakawa and Keysar (2018) propose that mental imagery is less vivid when evoked in a foreign than in a native language. The authors argue that reduced mental imagery could even account for moral foreign language effects, whereby moral choices become more utilitarian when made in a foreign language. Here we demonstrate that Hayakawa and Keysar's (2018) key results are better explained by reduced language comprehension in a foreign language than by less vivid imagery. We argue that (...) the paradigm used in Hayakawa and Keysar (2018) does not provide a satisfactory test of reduced imagery and we discuss an alternative paradigm based on recent experimental developments. (shrink)

George Eliot (1819-1880) escribió sus obras en un contexto protestante que se traslada a sus novelas, en las que aparecen tanto conflictos morales como pugnas entre confesiones religiosas y personajes que encarnan distintas profesiones. La visión del catolicismo que se proyecta en las novelas es muy crítica. Sin embargo, en época franquista se publicaron en el Estado español cuatro de sus novelas traducidas al castellano: Janet’s Repentance, Adam Bede, Silas Marner: the Weaver of Raveloe y The Mill on the Floss. (...) Este estudio investiga por qué ni la censura administrativa ni los catálogos morales se ensañaron con Eliot. Para elucidar la cuestión se analizan los expedientes de censura, los catálogos morales y las modificaciones y manipulaciones del texto original en las distintas traducciones. Los expedientes de censura autorizaron la publicación de las diferentes ediciones sin tachaduras ni modificaciones y los catálogos no alertaron contra la inmoralidad de las novelas que nos ocupan. A la luz de los comentarios que aparecen tanto en los expedientes como en los catálogos, podemos afirmar que las obras de Eliot no se percibieron como una amenaza al régimen franquista ni al catolicismo, ya que estaban ambientadas en un país protestante, ajeno a la realidad española, sin traslación posible. La facilidad con la que las obras superaron este proceso se debe también a la autocensura previa llevada a cabo por los responsables de la traducción y la edición. Cuando llegaron a la censura, la mayoría de los fragmentos más críticos con el catolicismo ya habían sido expurgados. (shrink)

Falk's paper provides a nice cross-species perspective and an interesting background to formulate a theory of the evolution of human language. However, the author does not provide a complete overview and analysis of the origins of language and takes for granted the “continuity hypothesis.” Also her “infant parking theory” is questionable, as it is not well supported by observations.

Neither laziness nor its condemnation are new inventions, however, perceiving laziness as a social condition that afflicts a 'nation' is. In the early modern era, Ottoman political treatises did not regard the people as the source of the state's problems. Yet in the nineteenth century, as the imperial ideology of Ottomanism and modern discourses of citizenship spread, so did the understanding of laziness as a social disease that the 'Ottoman nation' needed to eradicate. Asking what we can learn about Ottoman (...) history over the long nineteenth-century by looking closely into the contested and shifting boundaries of the laziness - productivity binary, Melis Hafez explores how 'laziness' can be used to understand emerging civic culture and its exclusionary practices in the Ottoman Empire. A polyphonic involvement of moralists, intellectuals, polemicists, novelists, bureaucrats, and, to an extent, the public reveals the complexities and ambiguities of this multifaceted cultural transformation. Using a wide variety of sources, this book explores the sustained anxiety about productivity that generated numerous reforms as well as new understandings of morality, subjectivity, citizenship, and nationhood among the Ottomans. (shrink)

I extend the Higher-Order View of Undermining Defeat (HOVUD) defended in Melis (2014) to account for the defeat of propositional justification. In doing so, I clarify the important notion of higher-order commitment, and I make some considerations concerning the defeat of externalist epistemic warrants.

If what we want from moral inquiry were the obtainment of objective moral truths, as moral realism claims it is, then there would be nothing morally unsatisfactory or lacking in a situation, in which we somehow had access to all moral truths, and were fundamentally finished with morality. In fact, that seems to be the realists’ conception of moral heaven. In this essay, however, I argue that some sort of moral wakefulness – that is, always paying attention to the subtleties (...) of life and people, and never taking for granted what their moral significance can possibly be – is an essential moral value, and, therefore, moral realism, which promotes a moral ideal that allows such moral lethargy and inattentiveness is morally objectionable. (shrink)

This article examines to what extent a particular case of cross-disciplinary research in the 1930s was structured by mechanistic reasoning. For this purpose, it identifies the interfield theories that allowed biologists and chemists to use each other’s techniques and findings, and that provided the basis for the experiments performed to identify plant growth hormones and to learn more about their role in the mechanism of plant growth. In 1930, chemists and biologists in Utrecht and Pasadena began to cooperatively study plant (...) growth. I will argue that these researchers decided to join forces because they believed to rely on each other’s findings and methods to solve their research problems adequately. In the course of the cooperation, organic chemists arrived at isolating plant growth hormones by using a test method developed in plant physiology. This achievement, in turn, facilitated biologists’ investigation of the mechanism of plant growth. Researchers eventually believed to have the means to study the relation between a substance’s molecular structure and its physiological activity. The way they conceptualized the problem of identifying hormones and unraveling the mechanism of plant growth, as well as their actual research actions are compatible with the new mechanists’ account of mechanism research. The study illustrates that focusing on researchers’ mechanistic reasoning can contribute considerably to explaining the structure of cross-disciplinary research projects. (shrink)

Read argues that modeling cultural idea systems serves to make explicit the cultural rules through which "cultural idea systems" frame behaviors that are culturally meaningful. Because cultural rules are typically "invisible" to us, one of the anthropologists' tasks is to elicit these rules, make them explicit and then use them to build explanations for patterns in cultural phenomena. The main example of Read's approach to cultural idea systems is the formal modeling of kinship terminologies. I reconstruct Read's modeling strategy as (...) comprising the following steps:From the way in which culture-bearers compute kin relations a data model is construed that makes explicit the cultural theory embedded in a kinship .. (shrink)

We focus on Timothy Williamson’s recent attack on the epistemological significance of the a priori–a posteriori distinction, and offer an explanation of why, fundamentally, it does not succeed. We begin by setting out Williamson’s core argument, and some of the background to it and move to consider two lines of conciliatory response to it—conciliatory in that neither questions the central analogy on which Williamson's argument depends. We claim, setting aside a methodological challenge to which Williamson owes an answer, that no (...) satisfactory such reconciliation is in prospect. Rather, as we then argue, —and it is on this that we base our overall negative assessment of his argument—Williamson’s core analogy is flawed by an oversight. We conclude with some brief reflections on Williamson’s ideas about the imagination as a source of knowledge. Our principal conclusion is only that Williamson’s argument fails to perform as advertised. A constructive case for confidence, to the contrary, that the intuitive contrast between a priori and a posteriori reflects something of fundamental epistemological significance is prefigured in our final section, but will not be elaborated here. (shrink)

much can be said about what the early twelfth-century debate on universals is not. For instance, it is not a discussion of which genera or species grasp the truth of things, or which genera or species a certain individual belongs to, or how one knows that this is so. Twelfth-century magistri thought that the genera and species for which nouns are found in ordinary language, such as 'animal' or 'man,' "cut the world at its joints." They considered it unproblematic both (...) that Socrates belongs to the genus Animal and the species Man and that one knows that he does.1 Similarly, the debate is not about properties of all sorts, or about things of all sorts. It focuses, rather, on substantial properties to the detriment of... (shrink)

We consider some nonprincipal filters of the Medvedev lattice. We prove that the filter generated by the nonzero closed degrees of difficulty is not principal and we compare this filter, with respect to inclusion, with some other filters of the lattice. All the filters considered in this paper are disjoint from the prime ideal generated by the dense degrees of difficulty.

This study examines whether and how a CEO’s personal traits (gender, altruism, age, and founder) influence organizational performance. Building upon upper echelons theory, this study develops a conceptual framework that gives explicit recognition to how the institutional environment surrounding the CEOs shapes their characteristics, which, in turn, are reflected in the different organizational strategies and performance. This study moves beyond the existing focus on for-profit corporations and conducts the empirical analysis on a novel, hand-collected, longitudinal dataset of 1342 firm-year observations (...) of 128 faith-based charity organizations operating in a major developing, Muslim-majority country in the period 1996–2019. This study reveals that those faith-based charity organizations led by CEOs with specific personal traits (woman, altruistic, young, and founder) exhibit better organizational performance. Importantly, CEOs’ personal traits, however, do not have a uniform, systematic effect; their effect is generally strengthened when the CEO is also the founder of the faith-based charity organization, given the greater latitude of managerial discretion that a CEO has in managing the organization. Our findings have important implications for individual charity organizations; their board of directors; and their stakeholders, in particular the communities they serve, as well as the whole society where they operate. (shrink)