The relationship between ethics and trust is ambiguous as ethics can promote trust, whilst trust can simultaneously be abused resulting in unethical behaviour. In this contribution to the debate on trust and ethics the focus is specifically on the role that ethics can play in facilitating trustworthiness. The article starts with a definition of the concept trustworthiness. It then reports on an empirical longitudinal study on trustworthiness that was conducted in a South African company in the insurance industry. The facilitators (...) of trustworthiness that were identified in this study and their relative contributions to trustworthiness are then discussed. Finally the implications of these findings for the ethical conduct of managers are discussed. It is demonstrated how ethical managerial conduct can enhance the trustworthiness of managers. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Interactivity and Enaction in Human Cognition” by Matthew Isaac Harvey, Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen & Sune Vork Steffensen. Upshot: To sort out their differences with enactive theory, interactivity theorists would do better to focus on operational closure only insofar as it constitutes a condition of intrinsic normativity or self-regulated coupling.

Turning to the history of philosophical thought, I am surprised by the question what is knowledge? I am surprised because usually we do not reflect on our own knowledge; it appears to us as something obvious. And yet this question has disturbed people since the beginning philosophical thinlung. Moreover, at the time knowledge appeared as a subject full of aporiasintellectual difficulties and obvious contradictions of judgment. This led to the humiliating doubt that man could know anything about the world in (...) which he lived and, thus, exposed, so to speak, the painful nerve of the cognitive aspirations of human reason. (shrink)

My young friends advise me to write my memoirs. For me this is comforting. The future is unpredictable. The present is dark—it is "without repentance or hope" and only the past is remembered. The reawakening of interest in events long ago is a sign that a new view of things is forming: history—the knowledge of the past—forms us, for it lives in our actions. People of the past are our contemporaries: the results of their labors are part of our everyday (...) life. Their insights and mistakes live with us and in us. Contemporary life is only the surface layer of human existence. Faith in the intellectual intuition of the young generation gives hope that the pallid lines of the past I remember might clarify a little the problems of the present time. (shrink)

La psicología contemporánea parece caracterizarse desde sus propios orígenes por la multiplicidad de sus contenidos, además de por su casi infinita fragmentación en corrientes encontradas. Esto crea importantes dificultades, no sólo a quienes quieran tener una primera aproximación, sino también a los especialistas, que muchas veces no llegan a una opinión suficientemente clara sobre la naturaleza epistemológica de la psicología, ni sobre su unidad disciplinar. Esta obra, sin descuidar el problema global, se centra en un aspecto particular: el que presenta (...) la praxis de la psicología, en particular la psicoterapia y sus fundamentos teóricos. Se pone especial interés en una visión crítica del psicoanálisis, punto de referencia inevitable (positivo o negativo) para la mayoría de las corrientes de psicoterapia. Pero este intento de esclarecimiento epistemológico y práctico se lleva a cabo desde un punto de vista original: a la luz del pensamiento de Santo Tomás de Aquino (1225-1274), conocido como uno de los más grandes teólogos y filósofos de la Iglesia Católica. Las calidades del Aquinate como epistemológico son sobradamente conocidas. Menos conocida es su faceta de psicólogo, que esta obra quiere poner de manifiesto con gran detalle para evidenciar la actualidad de las líneas maestras de la psicología de Santo Tomás, como también la posibilidad de practicar hoy la psicología bajo la guía fundamental del Doctor Humanitatis.\n. (shrink)