This study examines the influence of mood on corporate philanthropic giving. Drawing on group emotions theory and affect-infused decision theory, we advance the argument that firms allocate greater resources to philanthropy when headquarters-based employees are in a more positive affective state. We also describe three boundary conditions in this relationship—executives’ embeddedness in the firm, executives’ latitude to engage in philanthropic giving, and the firm’s track record of corporate social irresponsibility. We test our arguments using a longitudinal dataset of philanthropic giving (...) by U.S. firms. Our study contributes to the literature by shedding light on the role of affect in shaping the decision to allocate resources to corporate philanthropy. (shrink)

We consider motivations for acknowledging that people participate in multiple levels of economic agency. One of these levels is characterized in terms of subjective utility to the individual; another, frequently observed, level is characterized in terms of utility to social groups with which people identify. Following Bacharach, we describe such groups as ‘teams’. We review Bacharach’s theory of such identification in his account of ‘team reasoning’. While this conceptualization is useful, it applies only to processes supported by deliberation. As this (...) is only one of a range of causal mechanisms underlying behaviour by humans and other strategic agents, a more general account is desirable. We then argue that Stirling’s account of ‘conditional games’ achieves the desired generalization. (shrink)

In this study, we explore the relationship between perceived CEO greed and workplace safety. Drawing on insights from the social psychology literature, we theorize that CEOs are cognizant that their perceived greed has implications for how observers respond to failures in workplace safety. Our theorizing points to a somewhat counterintuitive positive relationship between perceived CEO greed and workplace safety. Consistent with our theorizing, we find that the relationship is attenuated when the CEO is insulated from how observers respond to firm (...) conduct and is amplified when the CEO’s characteristics have a larger impact on how observers respond to adverse firm-level events. We contribute to business ethics research on executive greed, on the relationship between CEO traits and (ir)responsible corporate conduct, and on the antecedents of workplace safety. (shrink)

The Association for Computing Machinery's Committee on Professional Ethics has been charged to execute three major projects over the next two years: updating ACM's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, revising the enforcement procedures for the Code, and developing new media to promote integrity in the profession. We cannot do this alone, and we are asking SIGCAS members to volunteer and get involved. We will briefly describe the rationale and plan behind these projects and describe opportunities to get involved.

This commentary suggests an alternate definition for metacognition, as well as an alternate basis for the relation in representation. These together open the way for an understanding of mindreading that is significantly different from the one advocated by Carruthers.

The chapter examines the complex problems surrounding Mill's active support for colonialism and empire. How did he rationalize his role in the colonial project, and reconcile his liberal values with the injustices and indignities of conquest, subjugation, and exploitation? These are the crucial questions of Mill's moral legacy that I address. Mill saw colonialism in moral terms. He justified it as an educational, civilizing mission and stimulus to development, freedom, and happiness. His utilitarian calculus was based on existing realities, rather (...) than theoretical ideals. This chapter is divided into four parts. After explaining the paradox, I examine Mill's time and place for the key ideas shaping his understanding of colonialism. I then explore his life experiences and how his thought evolved. I argue that Mill's qualified support for colonialism is consistent with his belief that progress and 'the improvement of mankind' are major components of his utilitarian value system. I conclude by analyzing how Mill might respond to some criticisms. (shrink)

For Socrates, philosophy is not like Christian conversion from error to truth, but rather it is like the pagan process whereby a young man is initiated into cult mysteries by a more experienced man - the mystagogos - who prepares him and leads him to the sacred precinct. In Greek cult religion, the mystagogos prepared the initiate for the esoteric mysteries revealed by the hierophant. Socrates treats traditional wisdom with scepticism, and this makes him appear ridiculous or dangerous in the (...) eyes of cultural conservatives. Nevertheless, his scepticism is not radical: custom is not something on which we must turn our backs if we are to pursue the truth. Socrates assumes an epistemology and employs a method by which he induces his companions to begin the critical and self-critical process of philosophical inquiry, not ignoring conventional wisdom, but thinking through and reinterpreting it as they make constructive progress towards the truth. He provides conclusive and convincing arguments in support of controversial answers to some of the most important moral questions he poses. (shrink)

A cutting-edge anthology that opens the door for emergent voices from African American, Indigenous, Latin American, and Asian embodiment traditions to transform the field of somatics The notion of “body” that underlies most available writings about somatic theories and practices often assumes a universal normality of structure and function that has now come into question. In this collection, viewpoints grounded in neural, hormonal, gender, and physiological diversities challenge convention and open up a more inclusive world of somatics for psychotherapy and (...) many forms of bodywork. The authors embody these differences and have developed their particular somatic practices out of direct experience. Their narratives offer new approaches to the transformation of our social order’s bodily roots enabling a healing of the recurrent traumas of the past. Covering topics such as the autistic body-mind, how the human body is both shaped by and shapes contemporary society, and somatic psychotherapy as a trustworthy resource for healing within the African American community, these poignant essays will help students and practitioners of somatics broaden the scope and efficacy of their therapeutic practices. (shrink)

This collection of new essays by eleven distinguished environmental philosophers addresses two main questions: first, whether environmental philosophy and ethics should be seen as a form of applied philosophy or as something else, perhaps best called practical philosophy; and second, how environmental philosophy is practiced in human life, especially in the lives of academics.

The resolution of ambiguities is one of the central problems for Machine Translation. In this paper we propose a knowledge-based approach to disambiguation which uses Description Logics (dl) as representation formalism. We present the process of anaphora resolution implemented in the Machine Translation systemfast and show how thedl systemback is used to support disambiguation.The disambiguation strategy uses factors representing syntactic, semantic, and conceptual constraints with different weights to choose the most adequate antecedent candidate. We show how these factors can be (...) declaratively represented as defaults inback. Disambiguation is then achieved by determining the interpretation that yields a qualitatively minimal number of exceptions to the defaults, and can thus be formalized as exception minimization. (shrink)

Ever since Achterhuis designated American philosophy of technology “empirical” there has been a Continental “push-back” defending the first generation of European—mostly Heidegger’s essentialistic “transcendental”—philosophy of technology. While I prefer a “concrete” turn—to avoid confusing with British “empiricism”—in a belief that particular technologies are different from others—this is a quibble. I admit I was very taken by Richard Rorty’s “anti-essentialism” and “non-foundationalism” in his version of pragmatism, and have adapted much of that stance into postphenomenology. In this contribution I reply to (...) the comments of Lars Botin and Robert Rosenberger. (shrink)

(2008). A Review of: “The University in Chains: Confronting the Military–Industrial–Academic Complex”. Educational Studies: Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 256-262.

_Expanding Hermeneutics_ examines the development of interpretation theory, emphasizing how science in practice involves and implicates interpretive processes. Ihde argues that the sciences have developed a sophisticated visual hermeneutics that produces evidence by means of imaging, visual displays, and visualizations. From this vantage point, Ihde demonstrates how interpretation is built into technologies and instruments.

In this study, Don Ross explores the relationship of economics to other branches of behavioral science, asking, in the course of his analysis, under what interpretation economics is a sound empirical science. The book explores the relationships between economic theory and the theoretical foundations of related disciplines that are relevant to the day-to-day work of economics -- the cognitive and behavioral sciences. It asks whether the increasingly sophisticated techniques of microeconomic analysis have revealed any deep empirical regularities -- whether technical (...) improvement represents improvement in any other sense. Casting Daniel Dennett and Kenneth Binmore as its intellectual heroes, the book proposes a comprehensive model of economic theory that, Ross argues, does not supplant, but recovers the core neoclassical insights, and counters the caricaturish conception of neoclassicism so derided by advocates of behavioral or evolutionary economics. Because he approaches his topic from the viewpoint of the philosophy of science, Ross devotes one chapter to the philosophical theory and terminology on which his argument depends and another to related philosophical issues. Two chapters provide the theoretical background in economics, one covering developments in neoclassical microeconomics and the other treating behavioral and experimental economics and evolutionary game theory. The three chapters at the heart of the argument then apply theses from the philosophy of cognitive science to foundational problems for economic theory. In these chapters, economists will find a genuinely new way of thinking about the implications of cognitive science for economics, and cognitive scientists will find in economic behavior, a new testing site for the explanations of cognitive science. (shrink)

1 INTRODUCTION Above the other titles he might justly have claimed, Charles S. Peirce prized the title 'logician'. He expressed in several places his ...

We want to keep hackers in the dark about our passwords and our credit card numbers. We want to keep potential eavesdroppers in the dark about our private communications with friends and business associates. This need for secrecy raises important questions in epistemology (how do we do it?) and in ethics (should we do it?). In order to answer these questions, it would be useful to have a good understanding of the concept of keeping someone in the dark. Several philosophers (...) (e.g., Bok, 1983; Carson, 2010; Mahon, 2009; Scheppele, 1988) have analyzed this concept (or, equivalently, the concept of keeping secrets) in terms of concealing and/or withholding information. However, their analyses incorrectly exclude clear instances of keeping someone in the dark. And more important, they incorrectly focus on possible means of keeping someone in the dark rather than on what it is to keep someone in the dark. In this paper, I argue that you keep X in the dark about a proposition P if and only if you intentionally cause X not to have a true belief that P. In addition, I show how this analysis of keeping someone in the dark can be extended from a categorical belief model of epistemic states to a credence (or degree of belief) model. (shrink)