Moral identity has been touted as a foundation for understanding moral agency in organizations. The purpose of this article is to review the current state of knowledge regarding moral identity and highlight several promising avenues for advancing current understandings of moral actions in organizational contexts. The article begins with a brief overview of two distinct conceptual perspectives on moral identity—the character perspective and the social-cognitive perspective—that dominate extant literature. It then discusses varying approaches that have been taken in attempting to (...) measure moral identity. The final two sections of the article review empirical findings regarding the antecedents and consequences of moral identity, respectively. Mechanisms and situational factors that are pertinent to moral agency in organizations are emphasized in both sections. (shrink)

Yu and Zenker (2022) argue that the oft-made distinction between convergent and linked argument structure is problematic. If their account holds, the linked/convergent distinction, at least as I have characterized it (Freeman 2011), seems to violate the dictum that structural analysis should come before evaluation. In this Reply I defend the position that we do not need to estimate or determine argument strength to determine whether the premises of an argument are linked or convergent. Résumé: Yu et Zenker (2022) (...) soutiennent que la distinction souvent faite entre structure d’argumentation convergente et structure d’argumentation liée est problématique. Si leur explication est valable, la distinction liée/convergente, du moins telle que je l’ai caractérisée (Freeman 2011), semble violer le dicton selon lequel l’analyse structurelle doit précéder l’évaluation. Dans cette réponse, je défends la position selon laquelle nous n’avons pas besoin d’estimer ou de déterminer la force de l’argument pour déterminer si les prémisses d’un argument sont liées ou convergentes. (shrink)

_Abstract: _Yu and Zenker (2022) argue that the oft-made distinction between convergent and linked argument structure is problematic. If their account holds, the linked/convergent distinction, at least as I have characterized it (Freeman 2011), seems to violate the dictum that structural analysis should come before evaluation. In this Reply I defend the position that we do not need to estimate or determine argument strength to determine whether the premises of an argument are linked or convergent. _Résumé_: Yu et Zenker (...) (2022) soutiennent que la distinction souvent faite entre structure d’argumentation convergente et structure d’argumentation liée est problématique. Si leur explication est valable, la distinction liée/convergente, du moins telle que je l’ai caractérisée (Freeman 2011), semble violer le dicton selon lequel l’analyse structurelle doit précéder l’évaluation. Dans cette réponse, je défends la position selon laquelle nous n’avons pas besoin d’estimer ou de déterminer la force de l’argument pour déterminer si les prémisses d’un argument sont liées ou convergentes. (shrink)

How should modern medicine's dramatic new powers to sustain life be employed? How should limited resources be used to extend and improve the quality of life? In this collection, Dan Brock, a distinguished philosopher and bioethicist and co-author of Deciding for Others (Cambridge, 1989), explores the moral issues raised by new ideals of shared decision making between physicians and patients. The book develops an ethical framework for decisions about life-sustaining treatment and euthanasia, and examines how these life and death decisions (...) are transformed in health policy when the focus shifts from what is best for a patient to what is just for all patients. Professor Brock combines acute philosophical analysis with a deep understanding of the realities of clinical health policy. This is a volume for philosophers concerned with medical ethics, health policy professionals, physicians interested in bioethics, and undergraduate courses in biomedical ethics. (shrink)

The argument from retraction (the speech act of “taking back” a previous speech act) has been one of the favorite arguments used by relativists about a variety of natural language expressions (predicates of taste, epistemic modals, moral and aesthetic claims etc.) in support of their view. The main consideration offered is that relativism can, while rival views cannot, account for this phenomenon. For some of those leading the charge, retraction is, in fact, mandatory: a norm of retraction makes it obligatory (...) for an agent to retract a previously unretracted assertion whenever what has been asserted is shown to be currently false. This norm, it is contended, distinguishes (radical) relativism from other views on the market. Recently, several considerations—both from the armchair and based on empirical studies—have been offered to undercut the support retraction has been taken to provide for relativism. In this paper, I engage with both types of considerations and lay out two strategies the radical relativist can follow: weakening the force of the retraction norm and restricting it to certain conditions. I explore how much of the recalcitrant data can be accounted for by each strategy, and show that the best route for the relativist is to adopt a flexible version of the view. Finally, I address the objection from ad-hocness in relation to the flexibility envisaged and put forward a principle based on the notion of the importance of the context of the assertor in a given context of assessment that underlies flexibility. (shrink)

Three-time New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely teams up with legendary The New Yorker cartoonist William Haefeli to present an expanded, illustrated collection of his immensely popularWall Street Journal advice column, “Ask Ariely”. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely revolutionized the way we think about ourselves, our minds, and our actions in his books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. Ariely applies this scientific analysis of the human condition in his “Ask Ariely” Q & A (...) column in the Wall Street Journal, in which he responds to readers who write in with personal conundrums ranging from the serious to the curious: What can you do to stay calm when you’re playing the volatile stock market? What’s the best way to get someone to stop smoking? How can you maximize the return on your investment at an all-you-can-eat buffet? Is it possible to put a price on the human soul? Can you ever rationally justify spending thousands of dollars on a Rolex? In Ask Ariely, a broad variety of economic, ethical, and emotional dilemmas are explored and addressed through text and images. Using their trademark insight and wit, Ariely and Haefeli help us reflect on how we can reason our way through external and internal challenges. Readers will laugh, learn, and most importantly gain a new perspective on how to deal with the inevitable problems that plague our daily life. (shrink)

Then involvement is essential. You cannot stand aside as a member of a community. The real involvement presupposes first a connection at the level of understanding the phenomenon, an empathic relationship with the studied phenomena and processes, relationship that generate intuitions, leaps in understanding and knowledge, discoveries, revelations. The paper is based on the idea that information technology and communications today generate a global interaction based on a complex computer network, which forms a sphere that covers the planet, assimilated with (...) a global intelligence, to which we can consciously adhere becoming a synapse. a global neural network. (shrink)

The dominant language of politics in the United States has been political individualism, with minimal restrictions on property and personal, voluntary conduct. But there are second languages of community that stress cooperation and group action. These second languages include the constitutional tradition for public health. Public health offers a community justification for paternalistic measures that, for example, discourage smoking or require seatbelts.

Preface Part One Buddhism and Phenomenology Ch.1Buddhism and Phenomenology Ch.2 Husserl and Merleau-Ponty Part Two The Four Basic Buddhist Models in India Introduction Ch.3 Model One: The Five Skandhas Ch.4 Model Two: Pratitya-samutpada Ch.5 Model Three: Tridhatu Ch.6 Model Four: Sila-Samadhi-Prajna Ch.7 Asamjni-samapatti and Nirodha-samapatti Ch.8 Summary of the Four Models Part Three Karma, Meditation, and Epistemology Ch.9 Karma Ch.10 Madhyamikan Issues Ch.11 The Privilaging of Prajna-paramita Part Four Trimsika and Translations Ch.12 Texts and Translations Part Five The Ch’eng Wei-Shih (...) Lun and the Problem of Psychosophical Closure: Yogacara in China Ch.13 Ch.14 Seven Trajectories Ch.15 The Legend of the Transmission of the Ch’eng Wei-Shih Lun Ch.16 Alterity: Parinama Ch.17 Why Consciousness in Not Empty Ch.18 On Rupa Ch.19 Externality Ch.20 The Four Conditions Ch.21 Mirror Knowing: Soteric Alterations Ch.22 Language, Avijnapti-Rupa and Vijnapti-Rupa Ch.23 Is What is Ultimately Real Itself Ultimately Real? Conclusions Appendices Bibliography Index. (shrink)

The general theory of perception proposed by Roderick Chisholm in his book Perceiving: A Philosophical Study1 has gained considerable acceptance among contemporary philosophers of perception. In this paper, I will review and evaluate one part of this theory and show where I believe an important modification is necessary. Chisholm distinguishes what he thinks are two importantly different senses of “perceive,” a propositional and a nonpropositional sense, and then proposes a definition of each. The propositional sense of “perceive” is expressed in (...) contexts in which what is perceived is referred to by a propositional clause, as in 1. George perceives that this is a door. The nonpropositional sense is expressed in contexts in which the perceptual object is referred to by a noun or noun phrase, as in 2. George perceives the door. The problem areas I will deal with are, first and foremost, the adequacy of the definitions Chisholm gives of these two senses, and second, the ways in which these senses are related to one another. In the first section, dealing with the propositional sense, I will not be concerned with propositional perceivings in their entirety. Specifically, I will not be concerned with them as instances of knowing that something is such and such, which is a central feature of Chisholm’s definition. Rather, I will be concerned mainly with the mental state, qua mental, which is involved in these perceptions, that is, the mental state considered apart from any relation it may have to the object it is about. I will assume that the mental state involved in a propositional perceiving is a conceptual state, i.e., one which involves the exercise of concepts or thoughts, together with an accompanying propositional attitude. The key locution Chisholm uses to describe this conceptual mental state is “S takes something to have some property.” I will argue that Chisholm’s definition of taking will not do the job it is intended to do in these perceptual contexts. In the second section, I will explore what Chisholm calls the “simplest” nonpropositional sense of “perceive,” which he defines wholly in terms of a causal relation existing between the object perceived and the subject’s sensory state. Significantly, this definition does not make any reference to a taking or to any propositional state on the part of the subject, but only to the subject’s sensory state. Consequently, if one accepts the idea, as I believe Chisholm would, that sensing is a nonconceptual state, then Chisholm’s nonpropositional sense of “perceive” would not refer to any conceptual fact at all. I will consider Chisholm’s definition, and raise the question of whether nonpropositional perceptual contexts should ever be construed as having a propositional meaning, that is, as including the idea that the subject exhibits some thought. As we shall see, Chisholm makes allowance for such a possibility. (shrink)

The first of its kind to thoroughly cover language technology at all levels and with all modern technologies this book takes an empirical approach to the ...

This article intends to show that ideology is always organized systemically by undertaking the opposition between conformity and diversity as its fundamental criterion. In order to underpin this hypothesis, the present article examines the inner structure of five classic ideologies, that can be understood as ideal ideological types. The analysis reveals that ideologies do not form a system because at the core of any ideology there is a key-concept not determined nor influenced by the key concepts of other ideologies.

Caring labor has emerged as a wide-ranging field of study. Industrialized nations have experienced a significant increase in female labor participation, which has been both the cause and the result of changes in the way care is provided. In the United States, the New Deal legislation cared for the population with new measures intended to provide greater security. Because pension, health, and welfare benefits were tied to employment, the provision of care remained gendered. Scholarly study of caring labor examines such (...) changes and considers the prospects for labor and social movements to provide quality care for all. (shrink)

In this chapter, we focus on the debate over publicly maintained racist monuments as it manifests in the mid-2010s Anglosphere, primarily in the United States and South Africa. After pointing to some representative examples of racist monuments, we discuss ways a monument can be thought racist and neutrally categorize removalist and preservationist arguments heard in the monument debate. We suggest that both extremist and moderate removalist goals are likely to be self-defeating and that when concerns of civic sustainability are put (...) on moral par with those of fairness and justice, something like a Mandela-era preservationist policy is best: one which removes the most offensive of the minor racist monuments, but which focuses on closing the monumentary gap between peoples and reframing existing racist monuments. (shrink)

Reviews the history of teaching in the United States over three hundred years, and describes aspects of recruitment, organization, and logic particular to the profession.

This article claims to dispute Derrida’s interpretation of Isaac’s sacrifice proposed in Donner la mort by means of three sources: 1) midrashic sources, which impose to read the sacrifice not as a requirement of murder, but as sacrifice of the sacrifice; 2) the phenomenology of Levinas which allows to measure the violence of the interpretation of Derrida and to return the biblical episode to the complications of the relationships between ethics and rationality; 3) the phenomenology of Marion, which, by refusing (...) to interpret this biblical episode as a sacrifice following its common concept, proposes a phenomenological interpretation which returns the sacrifice to the conceptuality of the gift and donation, considered as impossible by Derrida. Far from being conflicting ways, these three layers of analysis can be capitalized and mutually validated. (shrink)

In a range of contexts, individuals arrive at collective decisions by sharing confidence in their judgements. This tendency to evaluate the reliability of information by the confidence with which it is expressed has been termed the ‘confidence heuristic’. We tested two ways of implementing the confidence heuristic in the context of a collective perceptual decision-making task: either directly, by opting for the judgement made with higher confidence, or indirectly, by opting for the faster judgement, exploiting an inverse correlation between confidence (...) and reaction time. We found that the success of these heuristics depends on how similar individuals are in terms of the reliability of their judgements and, more importantly, that for dissimilar individuals such heuristics are dramatically inferior to interaction. Interaction allows individuals to alleviate, but not fully resolve, differences in the reliability of their judgements. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of confidence and collective decision-making. (shrink)

This commentary uses the dynamic of identity-protective cognition to pose a friendly challenge to Jussim (2012). Like other forms of information processing, this one is too readily characterized as a bias. It is no mistake, however, to view identity-protective cognition as generating inaccurate perceptions. The “bounded rationality” paradigm incorrectly equates rationality with forming accurate beliefs. But so does Jussim's critique.

In this paper I investigate a certain contextualist answer to the problem raised for the view by the phenomenon of faultless disagreement: namely, that it cannot account for disagreement in ordinary exchanges involving predicates of personal taste. I argue that the answer investigated either misses the target, ignoring the relevant cases which the relativist challenge is based or that it has to appeal to semantic blindness, a move that has certain costs. In addition, I argue that the same holds for (...) a specific variant of contextualist view – the presuppositional view proposed by López de Sa. (shrink)

A* PCFG parsing can dramatically reduce the time required to find the exact Viterbi parse by conservatively estimating outside Viterbi probabilities. We discuss various estimates and give efficient algorithms for computing them. On Penn treebank sentences, our most detailed estimate reduces the total number of edges processed to less than 3% of that required by exhaustive parsing, and even a simpler estimate which can be pre-computed in under a minute still reduces the work by a factor of 5. The algorithm (...) extends the classic A* graph search procedure to a certain hypergraph associated with parsing. Unlike bestfirst and finite-beam methods for achieving this kind of speed-up, the A* parser is guaranteed to return the most likely parse, not just an approximation. The algorithm is also correct for a wide range of parser control strategies and maintains a worst-case cubic time bound. (shrink)

This book argues that political libertarianism can be grounded in widely shared, everyday moral beliefs--particularly in strictures against shifting our burdens onto others. It also seeks to connect these philosophical arguments with related work in economics, history, and politics for a wide-ranging discussion of political economy.

The EU's politics of protecting refugees through deals such as that struck with Turkey in 2016 have been vilified by human rights campaigners. This article asks whether a full engagement with the Responsibility to Protect could offer the EU a way out of its current ethical and political malaise. It argues against such a proposition for two reasons. First, the EU already proclaims a long list of values that it asserts both contributed to its founding and continues to guide its (...) actions; the addition of RtoP, which contains no obligations to protect refugees in other territories, would add little. Second, when the logic underlying the EU and RtoP's politics of protection are examined, a similarity emerges which would make such supplementation redundant. Both primarily entail a solidarity with, and a bolstering of, the sovereign capacity of the modern state. All that is offered to refugees, and other suffering populations, is a minimalist humanitarian solidarity through the “outsourcing” of protection. Neither the EU's ethos nor RtoP can therefore provide the firm ethical grounds from which to build protection for the figure most clearly failed by modern states—the refugee. (shrink)

The theories of information ethics articulated by Luciano Floridi and his collaborators have clear implications for law. Information law, including the law of privacy and of intellectual property, is especially likely to benefit from a coherent and comprehensive theory of information ethics. This article illustrates how information ethics might apply to legal doctrine, by examining legal questions related to the ownership and control of the personal data representations, including photographs, game avatars, and consumer profiles, that have become ubiquitous with the (...) proliferation of information and communication technologies. Recent controversy over the control of player performance statistics in “fantasy” sports leagues provides a limiting case for the analysis. Such data representations will in many instances constitute the kind of personal data that information ethics asserts constitutes an information entity. Legal doctrine in some instances proves sympathetic to such an assertion, but remains largely inchoate as to which data might constitute a given information entity in a given instance. Neither is information ethics, in its current state of development, entirely helpful in answering this critical question. While information ethics holds some promise to bring coherence to this area of the law, further work articulating a richer theory of information ethics will be necessary before it can do so. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Moral Synonymy: John Stuart Mill and the Ethics of StyleDan BurnstoneI“A common language in which values may be expressed”: this is a phrase John Stuart Mill might well have used to describe utility—the common denominator of different ethical values in utilitarian moral reckoning. In fact, this is Mill’s phrase describing money as a circulating medium. 1 In utilitarianism, utility is the ubiquitous form of moral currency; like money in (...) the capitalist economy, it functions as the “universal equivalent” in the moral economy. 2 It is therefore unsurprising that economic idioms abound in discussions of utilitarianism, with their talk of trade-offs, calculation, and costs. But it is not the parallel with economic exchange that I want to focus on in this article. Mill’s reference to “a common language” points succinctly to a different connection which will be the center of attention, and that is between forms of ethical and linguistic equivalence.It is this conjunction that the term “moral synonymy” is intended to capture. By moral synonymy I want to indicate a particular conjunction of perspectives on ethics and language, or more precisely, style—a conjunction which, I shall argue, Mill’s work can help us both to see and to see through. A bare and schematic anticipation of my approach would be to say that what a belief in commensurability is to the realm of ethics, a belief in synonymy is to the realm of language. This article will explore the interrelationship of these two ideas. In the end I shall suggest that the collaboration between ethics and style denoted by moral synonymy imposes severe limitations on thinking about ethics and literature, and that an examination of moral synonymy and its [End Page 46] implications should be part of the currently revived attempts to work out the relationship between ethics and literature.Synonymy is the idea that identical meaning can be expressed in different linguistic forms. Style—as linguistic form of expression—can be varied or discarded without altering the body of sense it clothes. 3 To believe in moral commensurability is to believe that there is some common value by means of which different values can be measured against each other, and conflicts between them rationally decided. One leading candidate for the role of common value is, of course, utility, and utilitarianism will be taken here as typical of a commensurabilist approach. So, to outline the parallel between ethics and style that we will focus on: just as the believer in synonymy thinks that distinct linguistic styles may be shown to be so many different vehicles for expressing common meanings, so the utilitarian thinks that distinct values turn out ultimately to be so many forms for conveying the common value of utility. Utilitarians, as commensurabilists, happily commit the ethical variety of the “heresy of paraphrase.” They are happy to reduce different values merely to styles of utility. This is why I want to call utilitarianism a kind of moral synonymy.IIWe can understand ethical commensurability more clearly by turning briefly to Mill’s work. Mill relies on utility as the single criterion for settling ethical conflicts. In Utilitarianism he proposes happiness not as one among the ends or criteria of morality, but as the only one. He argues that “to desire anything except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility” (X, p. 238). Such assertions are the source of familiar difficulties for Mill’s moral theory, for there would seem to be ends other than happiness under the title of which people desire things. Moreover, some of these ends are arguably not only irreducible but also prone to come into conflict with utility (autonomy is a good example of one such value). So it is improbable that happiness is the unique categorial end. 4 There is in fact a tension—vital to Mill and to this article—between Mill’s formal philosophical adherence to utility and his practical recognition of the diversity of values; but nevertheless, he always professes ultimate allegiance to the idea that utility can be considered as the “common umpire” in ethical disputes (X, p. 226). [End Page 47]We... (shrink)

This article reinterprets an incident that Livy (8.18.4–11) and derivative later sources place in the year 331 BCE: a wave of poisonings whose perpetrators are brought to light after an enslaved woman contacts a Roman magistrate. Its main objectives are to show that the incident is best understood in connection with the transmission of novel—or perceived as novel—pharmacological knowledge, and in conjunction with shifts in the institution of slavery at Rome that were set in motion by the Republic’s expansion; that (...) a key figure in the mythological encoding of this transmission was the legendary Circe; and that moving away from previous scholarship’s concern with the matronae alleged to have carried out the poisonings and focusing instead on “la servant délatrice” (Jean-Marie Pailler) opens up new corridors into the cultural history of this period. (shrink)

Interest in the political relevance of the emotions is growing rapidly. In light of this, Hannah Arendt’s claim that the emotions are apolitical has come under renewed fire. But many critics have misunderstood her views on the relationship between individuals, emotions and the political. This paper addresses this issue by reconstructing the conceptual framework through which Arendt understands the emotions. Arendt often describes the heart – where the emotions reside – as a place of darkness. I begin by tracing this (...) metaphor through her work to demonstrate that it is meant to convey the inherently uncertain nature of emotions rather than a devaluation of them. I proceed to challenge the notion that Arendt adopts the Enlightenment dichotomy between reason and emotion. In fact, she rejects both as a basis for politics. However, she does identify some constructive roles for the emotions. I argue that fear is intrinsically connected to courage – the principal political virtue – in Arendt’s philosophy. In ligh... (shrink)

Do we have free will? And if we don't, why do we think we do? Scientists and philosophers have been battling with this issue for years. In this book, a former Christian minister who is now an internationally recognized authority on atheism addresses these questions."--Page 2 of cover.

Moral minds -- Fear morality -- Humanistic morality.