The conceptions of wit and irony of the early Friedrich Schlegel together constitute a philosophically ambitious form of early-romantic dialectic. This dialectic was directed especially against the closed philosophical system of Fichte, and tries to show a third way between the abandonment of a system and a closed system. The result is an open system, which can accommodate historical change and an infinite approach to the absolute. The article discusses the origin of this third way in romantic irony, and Schlegel’s (...) critique of Fichte, as well as the role poetry and the fragment as a form of philosophical discourse plays for Schlegel’s dialectic. (shrink)

Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, Faces of Environmental Racism exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of current environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate analytic technique and whether there are alternate routes to sustainable development in the South.

Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, Faces of Environmental Racism exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of current environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate analytic technique and whether there are alternate routes to sustainable development in the South.

In their jointly written book, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler defend ’the development and deployment of genetic intervention technologies?.?.?.’, including genetic enhancements, against charges that they exacerbate injustice. The present paper examines some of their arguments. The first section shows that the authors confuse real societies with just societies. The second shows that without this confusion, their arguments reveal the enormous justice-impairing potential of deploying genetic enhancements in such (...) societies as the United States. (shrink)

The original position contractarian model of ethical reasoning put forth by John Rawls has been examined as a basis for an environmental ethic on three previous occasions in this journal and in Peter Wenz’s Environmental Justice. In this article, I critically examine each of these treatments, analyzing the proposals offered and identifying their shortcomings. I find a total of seven different proposals in this literature for modifying Rawls’ theory to augment its adequacy or as a ground environmental ethics. The (...) diverse difficulties that arise in attempting to apply Rawls suggest the conclusion that Rawlsian ethics may not be a suitable foundation for an adequate long-term environmental ethics. (shrink)

This collaborative publication offers salient instructional models, methods, and modalities centered on the whole person.

Perennialists regarding the phenomenology of mysticism, like Walter Stace, feel that all Christian mystical experiences are fundamentally similar to each other and to experiences described by mystics across religious traditions, cultures and ages. In his seminal work, Mystic Union: An Essay in the Phenomenology of Mysticism, Nelson Pike convincingly argues that this extreme position is inadequate for capturing the breadth of experiences described by the canonical Medieval Christian mystics. However, Pike may have leaned too far away from perennialism in claiming (...) that all the experiences of (Christian) mystic union are essentially theistic. Here, I argue that Pike did not successfully establish this point and that union without distinction, often described as the pinnacle of union by Christian mystics, remains a viable candidate for an instance of a trans-traditionally type-identical mystical experience. (shrink)

Filmosophy is a provocative new manifesto for a radically philosophical way of understanding cinema. It coalesces twentieth-century ideas of film as thought (from Hugo Münsterberg to Gilles Deleuze) into a practical theory of "film-thinking," arguing that film style conveys poetic ideas through a constant dramatic "intent" about the characters, spaces, and events of film. Discussing contemporary filmmakers such as Béla Tarr and the Dardenne brothers, this timely contribution to the study of film and philosophy will provoke debate among audiences and (...) filmmakers alike. FILMOSOPHY ® is a registered U.S. trademark owned by Valentin Stoilov (www.filmosophy.com) for educational services in the field of motion picture history theory and production. Mr. Stoilov is not the source or origin of this book and has not sponsored or endorsed it or its author. (shrink)

The human world is replete with narratives - narratives of our making that are uniquely appreciated by us. Some thinkers have afforded special importance to our capacity to generate such narratives, seeing it as variously enabling us to: exercise our imaginations in unique ways; engender an understanding of actions performed for reasons; and provide a basis for the kind of reflection and evaluation that matters vitally to moral and self development. Perhaps most radically, some hold that narratives are essential for (...) the constitution of human selves. This volume brings together nine original contributions in which the individual authors advance, develop and challenge proposals of these kinds. They critically examine the place and importance of narratives in human lives and consider the underlying capacities that permit us to produce and utilise these special artifacts. All of the papers are written in a non-technical and accessible style. (shrink)

The primary units of meaning in the use and comprehension of language are speech acts of the type called illocutionary acts. In Foundations of Illocutionary Logic John Searle and Daniel Vanderveken presented the first formalized logic of a general theory of speech acts. In Meaning and Speech Acts Daniel Vanderveken further develops the logic of speech acts and the logic of propositions to construct a general semantic theory of natural languages. Volume I, Principles of Language Use, explains the (...) general principles that connect meaning, reason, thought and speech acts in the semantic structure of language. It presupposes no detailed knowledge of logical formalism, and will be accessible to a large readership of students and scholars from philosophy, lingustics, cognitive psychology and computer science. Volume II, Formal Semantics of Success and Satisfaction uses the resources of philosophical and mathematical logics to develop a formalization of the laws of the semantic theory advanced in Volume I. It will be of interest to theoretical linguists and those involved in mathematical logic and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

From dogs to gods, the science of understanding mysterious minds--including your own. Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club." It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of mind do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who (...) have discovered that minds--while incredibly important--are a matter of perception. Their research opens a trove of new findings, with insights into human behavior that are fascinating, frightening and funny. The Mind Club explains why we love some animals and eat others, why people debate the existence of God so intensely, how good people can be so cruel, and why robots make such poor lovers. By investigating the mind perception of extraordinary targets--animals, machines, comatose people, god--Wegner and Gray explain what it means to have a mind, and why it matters so much. Fusing cutting-edge research and personal anecdotes, The Mind Club explores the moral dimensions of mind perception with wit and compassion, revealing the surprisingly simple basis for what compels us to love and hate, to harm and to protect. (shrink)

The topic of my dissertation is satire. This seems to excite many people, and over the past four years I have heard many variations of a similar refrain: “Oh, wow. You’re studying satire? That’s very topical. You must have a lot of material to work with.” There is a way in which this is true, though I suspect in a way that diverges from the way that most of my interlocutors believed. I suspect that the material they imagined me to (...) be working with was the output of Donald Trump, first a candidate for and now holder of the office of President of the United States. That is not the material I find interesting. More interesting to me is their statement. It evinces a number of beliefs that I find interesting, chief among them that Trump makes the current period particularly apt for satire, as if a doddery and incompetent ruling class is somehow a recent phenomenon. And I suspect that underneath this belief in the aptness of satire is a belief in the power of satire. Satire is somehow how people are going to strike back at the vice-governed fools who rule us. Those beliefs are the material I want to work with. This is my interest in satire, then: not so much what it is about satire that makes it powerful, but what is it about satire that makes people think it is powerful? And what is it about satire that makes people think it is powerful when there is pretty powerful evidence that it is not? Unfortunately, here is where I run into the problem that in a very important way I do not have a lot of material to work with. There is not an awful lot on satire within the analytic tradition: outside of a few references to satire, analytic discussions of satire are limited to two short articles. Accordingly, I have taken the task of my dissertation to be to create an account of satire that helps to bring forward why satire is a thing that people can imagine to be powerful, that they can imagine to be politically effective. My dissertation will effectively have two halves, one where I build my account and one where I begin to apply it. The purpose of applying my account, which will comprise the final two chapters, will not be to show its implications so much as how it can be used. My goal will not so much be to give definitive answers about the nature of satire, but rather to give a demonstration of how my account facilitates engaging questions about the role of satire in social and political context. (shrink)

ABSTRACT How can imagination generate knowledge when its contents are voluntarily determined? Several philosophers have recently answered this question by pointing to the constraints that underpin imagination when it plays knowledge-generating roles. Nevertheless, little has been said about the nature of these constraints. In this paper, I argue that the constraints that underpin sensory imagination come from the structure of causal probabilistic generative models, a construct that has been highly influential in recent cognitive science and machine learning. I highlight several (...) attractions of this account, and I favourably contrast it with Peter Langland-Hassan’s account of sensory imagination in terms of the forward models exploited in sensorimotor control. (shrink)

A reconstruction of F.W.J. Schelling's philosophy of language based on a detailed reading of §73 of Schelling's lectures on the Philosophy of Art.

The authors examined how a perceiver’s identification of a target person’s actions covaries with attributions of mind to the target. The authors found in Study 1 that the attribution of intentionality and cognition to a target was associated with identifying the target’s action in terms of high-level effects rather than low-level details. In Study 2, both action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, and in Study 3, they were reduced for a target suffering misfortune. In Study (...) 4, it was again found that action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, but like that for the self or a liked other, positive actions were identified at higher levels than negative actions, with the reverse being true for disliked others. In Study 5, the authors found that instructing participants to adopt the target’s perspective did not affect mind attribution but did lead to higher level identifications of the.. (shrink)

Jaakko Hintikka (1998) has argued that clarifying the notion of abduction is the fundamental problem of contemporary epistemology. One traditional interpretation of Peirce on abduction sees it as a recipe for generating new theoretical discoveries . A second standard view sees abduction as a mode of reasoning that justifies beliefs about the probable truth of theories. While each reading has some grounding in Peirce's writings, each leaves out features that are crucial to Peirce's distinctive understanding of abduction. I develop and (...) defend a third interpretation, according to which Peirce takes abductive reasoning to lead to judgments about the relative pursuitworthiness of theories; conclusions that can be thoroughly disconnected from assessments of truth-value. Even if Peirce's use of "abduction" slides around among each of these three importantly different though potentially compatible senses, this neglected third understanding makes sense of a large number of Peirce's remarks and directs our attention to the cognitive structure of judgments that scientists face after the initial proposal of explanatory hypotheses but prior to their experimental testing; a topic which should be of interest to contemporary philosophers of science. (shrink)

Those researching HIV prevention measures for people who inject drugs face a dilemma. Regions where baseline HIV prevalence and onward transmission via injecting is sufficiently high to power HIV prevention trials are also those where repressive laws, policies and practices raise concerns about the ethics of research subject protection. Dawson et al, outlining criteria to address ethical challenges in HIV prevention research among PWID, recommend that all trial participants be offered sterile injecting equipment and urge additional strategies to limit research (...) and background risks.1 In light of ethical questions opened by recent clinical trials involving PWID, including several the authors cite favourably, these cautions are timely. Dawson et al urge weighing of costs and benefits of PWID participation in research trials as an essential part of the ethical calculus. Overdose is a particular risk in any trial that uses abstinence from opioids as a precondition for participation or as an outcome of interest, and a risk that institutional review boards and researchers frequently ignore. Given the increased likelihood of fatal overdose for those who return to injection following a period of abstinence, provision to all trial participants of naloxone—the overdose antidote …. (shrink)

Jeffrey (1983) proposed a generalization of conditioning as a means of updating probability distributions when new evidence drives no event to certainty. His rule requires the stability of certain conditional probabilities through time. We tested this assumption (“invariance”) from the psychological point of view. In Experiment 1 participants offered probability estimates for events in Jeffrey’s candlelight example. Two further scenarios were investigated in Experiment 2, one in which invariance seems justified, the other in which it does not. Results were in (...) rough conformity to Jeffrey (1983)’s principle. (shrink)

Memory perfttrmattce of 118 individuals who had been iu close dating relationships for at least 3 months was studied. For a memory task ostensibly to be performed by pairs, some Ss were paired..

Wittgenstein famously remarks that ‘the meaning of a word is its use’ (PI §43). Whether or not one views this as gesturing at a ‘theory’ of meaning, or instead as aiming primarily at dissuading us from certain misconceptions of language that are a source of puzzlement, it is clear that Wittgenstein held that for certain purposes the meaning of an expression could profitably be characterised as its use. Throughout his later writings, however, Wittgenstein’s appeal to the notion of use pulls (...) in two directions. In several places, Wittgenstein seems to connect the notion of an expression’s meaning with that of use in the sense of usage or practice. More specifically, he suggests that for an expression to possess meaning is for there to be a practice of employing it according to certain rules. ‘That’, he tells us, ‘is why there exists a correspondence between the concepts “rule” and “meaning”’ (OC §62; cf. PG 68; PO 51; RFM VI §28; VW 103). Indeed, Wittgenstein goes so far as to say, ‘The rule-governed nature of our languages permeates our life’ (RC §303). Call the view that the meaning of an expression is determined by a general principle governing its use, rulism. (shrink)

Predictive processing and its apparent commitment to explaining cognition in terms of Bayesian inference over hierarchical generative models seems to flatly contradict the pragmatist conception of mind and experience. Against this, I argue that this appearance results from philosophical overlays at odd with the science itself, and that the two frameworks are in fact well-poised for mutually beneficial theoretical exchange. Specifically, I argue: first, that predictive processing illuminates pragmatism’s commitment to both the primacy of pragmatic coping in accounts of the (...) mind and the profound organism-relativity of experience; second, that this pragmatic, “narcissistic” character of prediction error minimization undermines its ability to explain the distinctive normativity of intentionality; and third, that predictive processing therefore mandates an extra-neural account of intentional content of exactly the sort that pragmatism’s communitarian vision of human thought can provide. (shrink)

Markets are central institutions in societies such as ours, and it seems appropriate to ask whether markets treat individuals justly or unjustly and whether choices individuals make concerning their market behavior are just or unjust. After all, markets influence most important features of our lives from the environment in which we live to the ways in which we find pleasure and fulfillment. Within market life we collectively determine the shape of human existence.<1>.

Two striking claims are advanced on behalf of the free energy principle in cognitive science and philosophy: that it identifies a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems; and that it has important implications for our understanding of how the brain works, defining a set of process theories—roughly, theories of the structure and functions of neural mechanisms—consistent with the free energy minimising imperative that it derives as a necessary feature of all self-organising systems. I argue that the conjunction (...) of claims and rests on a fallacy of equivocation. The FEP can be interpreted in two ways: as a claim about how it is possible to redescribe the existence of self-organising systems, and as a claim about how such systems maintain their existence. Although the Descriptive FEP plausibly does identify a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems, it has no important implications for our understanding of how the brain works. Although the Explanatory FEP would have such implications if it were true, it does not identify a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems. I consider various ways of responding to this conclusion, and I explore its implications for the role and importance of the FEP in cognitive science and philosophy. (shrink)

Daniel Whistler argues that Hemsterhuis' philosophy matters and that its exclusion from the canon of modern philosophy has been unjust. This is not just because of its influence on later thinkers, but is primarily because Hemsterhuis' philosophy contains a rich assemblage of ideas and philosophical practices.

In the first book-length study of American philosophy at the turn of the century, Daniel J. Wilson traces the formation of philosophy as an academic discipline. Wilson shows how the rise of the natural and physical sciences at the end of the nineteenth century precipitated a "crisis of confidence" among philosophers as to the role of their discipline. Deftly tracing the ways in which philosophers sought to incorporate scientific values and methods into their outlook and to redefine philosophy itself, (...) Wilson moves between close analysis of philosophical texts and consideration of professional careers of illustrative philosophers, such as Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce. The author situates the emergence of professional philosophy in the context of the professionalization of American higher education and articulates, in the case of philosophy, the structures and values of a professional discipline. One of the most important consequences of this transformation was a new emphasis on communal theories of truth. Peirce, Dewey, and Royce all developed sophisticated and important theories of community as they were engaged in reshaping and redefining the limits of philosophy. This book will be of great importance for those interested in the history of philosophy, the rise of professions, and American intellectual and educational history, and to all those seeking to understand the contemporary revival of pragmatic thought and theories of community. (shrink)

The accessibility of suppressed thoughts was compared with the accessibility of thoughts on which Ss were consciously trying to concentrate. In Experiment I, Ss made associations to word prompts as they tried to suppress thinking about a target word (e.g., house) or tried to concentrate on that word. Under the cognitive load imposed by time pressure, they gave the target word in response to target-related prompts (e.g., home) more often during suppression than during concentration. In Experiment 2, reaction times for (...) naming colors of words were found to be greater under conditions of cognitive load when Ss were asked to suppress thinking of the word than under conditions of no cognitive load or when Ss were asked to concentrate on the word. The results support the idea that an automatic search for the suppression target increases the accessibility of the target during.. (shrink)

Recent laboratory experiments have shown that both infant and adult learners can acquire word‐referent mappings using cross‐situational statistics. The vast majority of the work on this topic has used unfamiliar objects presented on neutral backgrounds as the visual contexts for word learning. However, these laboratory contexts are much different than the real‐world contexts in which learning occurs. Thus, the feasibility of generalizing cross‐situational learning beyond the laboratory is in question. Adapting the Human Simulation Paradigm, we conducted a series of experiments (...) examining cross‐situational learning from children's egocentric videos captured during naturalistic play. Focusing on individually ambiguous naming moments that naturally occur during toy play, we asked how statistical learning unfolds in real time through accumulating cross‐situational statistics in naturalistic contexts. We found that even when learning situations were individually ambiguous, learners’ performance gradually improved over time. This improvement was driven in part by learners’ use of partial knowledge acquired from previous learning situations, even when they had not yet discovered correct word‐object mappings. These results suggest that word learning is a continuous process by means of real‐time information integration. (shrink)

We explore the ability to distinguish random from non-random events. Randomness is defined in terms of radioactive decay whereas non-randomness is quantified by excess repetitions (“repeat”) or alternations (“switch”) between successive bits. In the first four experiments no mention was made of randomness, probability, or related concepts in task instructions. We found superior performance in distinguishing random stimuli from repeat stimuli compared to switch stimuli. The last three experiments explicitly evoked the concept of randomness, thus allowing comparison of perceptual and (...) conceptual performance. The ability to identify random events from switch distracters was inferior to the ability to discriminate random from switch stimuli. In contrast, for repeat stimuli the concept of randomness appears to roughly coincide with perceptual discriminability. Finally, the ability to identify or produce stimuli as random did not co-vary with the ability to discriminate random from non-random stimuli. (shrink)

This book is a study of the role of intellect in human action as described by Thomas Aquinas. One of its primary aims is to compare the interpretation of Aristotle by Aquinas with the lines of interpretation offered in contemporary Aristotelian scholarship. The book seeks to clarify the problems involved in the appropriation of Aristotle's theory by a Christian theologian, including such topics as the practical syllogism and the problems of akrasia. Westberg argues that Aquinas was much closer to Aristotle (...) than is often recognized, and he puts forward important new interpretations of the relation of intellect and will in the stages of intention, deliberation, decision, and execution. In the concluding section of the book, he shows how this new interpretation yields fruitful insights on a range of theological topics, including sin, law, love, and the moral virtues. (shrink)

It has been remarked, my Hermippus, that though the ancient philosophers conveyed most of their instruction in the form of dialogue, this method of composition has been little practised in later ages, and has seldom succeeded in the hands of those who have attempted it. Accurate and regular argument, indeed, such as is now expected of philosophical enquirers, naturally throws a man into the methodical and didactic manner; where he can immediately, without preparation, explain the point at which he aims; (...) and thence proceed, without interruption, to deduce the proofs on which it is established. To deliver a SYSTEM in conversation, scarcely appears natural; and while the dialogue-writer desires, by departing from the direct style of composition, to give a freer air to his performance, and avoid the appearance of Author and Reader, he is apt to run into a worse inconvenience, and convey the image of Pedagogue and Pupil. Or, if he carries on the dispute in the natural spirit of good company, by throwing in a variety of topics, and preserving a proper balance among the speakers, he often loses so much time in preparations and transitions, that the reader will scarcely think himself compensated, by all the graces of dialogue, for the order, brevity, and precision, which are sacrificed to them. (shrink)

Are we the robots? This question surfaces often in current psychological re- search, as various kinds of robot parts-automatic actions, mental mechanisms, even neural circuits-keep appearing in our explanations of human behavior. Automatic processes seem responsible for a wide range of the things we do, a fact that may leave us feeling, if not fully robotic, at least a bit nonhuman. The complement of the automatic process in contemporary psychology, of course, is the controlled process (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; Bargh, (...) 1984; Posner & Snyder, 1975; Shiffrin & Schnieder, 1977), and it is in theories of controlled processes that vestiges of our humanity reappear. Controlled processes are viewed as conscious, effortful, and intentional. and as drawing on more sources of information than automatic processes. With this power of conscious will, controlled processes seem to bring the civilized quality back to psychological explanation that automatic processes leave out. Yet by reintroducing this touch of humanity, the notion of a controlled process also brings us within glimpsing range of a fatal theoretical error-the idea that there is a controller. (shrink)

The role of the facilitator within Communities of Philosophical Inquiry has often been allocated to structuring group interactions and/or affirming participants' contributions. In this paper, however, it will be argued that facilitators must take a far more active role in dialogue than has hereto been recognized. This is the case because, when left to its own devices, CPI dialogue often devolves into mere opinion tourism, becomes obscure, and/or is drowned by an excess of irrelevant content. It will be argued that (...) these effects, in turn, pose a serious threat to agent investment. That is, by muddying dialogue, these effects can sever the link between agents' motivational sets and the subject matter at hand and, consequently, may cause agents to internally disengage from the discussion underway. Given the danger that unchecked dialogue poses to agent investment, it will be argued that facilitators must be vigilant in attending to the health of the linguistic environment that both they themselves and participants occupy. That is, it will be argued that facilitators have a responsibility to care for participants by intervening in dialogue and pushing for rigour and clarity. This ecocentric model of care, interestingly, often directly contends with the more intuitive, or biocentric position, that a facilitator must directly care for participants affective or emotional welfare by celebrating their contributions for contribution's sake. Instead, it suggests that facilitators can indirectly care for participants by strategically prompting them to make their contributions logically sound, concise and clear. Moreover, this ecocentric perspective also conflicts with the often purported view that a facilitator is a temporary figure that should eventually become obsolete in a CPI. To the contrary, the ecocentric perspective suggests that a facilitator's role is indispensable to a CPI's success, insofar as it helps create and maintain the necessary conditions for agent investment, and helps ensure the continued health of the linguistic ecosystem, upon which everybody's welfare crucially depends. (shrink)

Can Rawls’s theory provide a framework for assessing obligations to future generations? Extending the veil of ignorance so that participants in the original position do not know to which generation they belong appears to fail in this endeavour. Earlier generations cannot improve their situation by “cooperating” with later generations. Such circumstances, lacking mutuality, leave no room for an agreement or contract. Nevertheless, the original position can be reconstructed so as to model relations of mutuality between generations even if these are (...) absent from the real world. This chapter assesses earlier attempts to do this and provides a rationale for viewing the just savings principle as a clause in the full formulation of the difference principle. (shrink)

Many libertarians believe that self-ownership is a separate matter from ownership of extra-personal property. “No-proviso” libertarians hold that property ownership should be free of any “fair share” constraints, on the grounds that the inability of the very poor to control property leaves their self-ownership intact. By contrast, left-libertarians hold that while no one need compensate others for owning himself, still property owners must compensate others for owning extra-personal property. What would a “self” have to be for these claims to be (...) true? I argue that both of these camps must conceive of the boundaries of the self as including one's body but no part of the extra-personal world. However, other libertarians draw those boundaries differently, so that self-ownership cannot be separated from the right to control extra-personal property after all. In that case, property ownership must be subject to a fair share constraint, but that constraint does not require appropriators to pay compensation. This view, which I call “right libertarianism,” differs importantly from the other types primarily in its conception of the self, which I argue is independently more plausible. (shrink)

In slapstick comedy, the worst thing that could happen usually does: The person with a sore toe manages to stub it, sometimes twice. Such errors also arise in daily life, and research traces the tendency to do precisely the worst thing to ironic processes of mental control. These monitoring processes keep us watchful for errors of thought, speech, and action and enable us to avoid the worst thing in most situations, but they also increase the likelihood of such errors when (...) we attempt to exert control under mental load (stress, time pressure, or distraction). Ironic errors in attention and memory occur with identifiable brain activity and prompt recurrent unwanted thoughts; attraction to forbidden desires; expression of objectionable social prejudices; production of movement errors; and rebounds of negative experiences such as anxiety, pain, and depression. Such ironies can be overcome when effective control strategies are deployed and mental load is minimized. (shrink)

Business Ethics is designed to serve as a textbook for first year students of MBA and diploma students of management courses. The book provides a deep insight into the crucial role played by ethical choices in managerial decision making within an organization as well as the impact of such decisions on the world at large. Starting with a broad overview of the meaning and scope of ethics and the development of ethical thought, the book puts forward the applications of ethical (...) standards to business areas such as corporate governance, marketing and brand management, advertising, and finance. The discussion shifts to a more human level with the various issues of workplace ethics as well as consumer rights. Special focus is given to ethical choices related to the environment, cyber space and criminal intimidation. Contemporary issues like corporate code of ethics, political correctness and the role played by NPO and NGO in upholding moral values are discussed in detail. Finally, several open-ended issues like Intellectual Property. The book follows a debate-based approach where both for and against views are presented, followed by concept analysis and logical deductions. This approach is well aided with a number of caselets, case studies and end chapter review questions. This book will also serve as a useful reference for BBA faculty and professionals. (shrink)