To address the underrepresentation of women in philosophy effectively, we must understand the causes of the early loss of women. In this paper we challenge one of the few explanations that has focused on why women might leave philosophy at early stages. Wesley Buckwalter and Stephen Stich offer some evidence that women have different intuitions than men about philosophical thought experiments. We present some concerns about their evidence and we discuss our own study, in which we attempted to replicate their (...) results for 23 different responses to 14 scenarios . We also conducted a literature search to see if other philosophers or psychologists have tested for gender differences in philosophical intuitions. Based on our findings, we argue that that it is unlikely that gender differences in intuitions play a significant role in driving women from philosophy. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of strategic conversations in corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy formation. The authors suggest that explicitly engaging stakeholders in the CSR strategy-making process, through the mechanism of strategic conversations, will minimize future stakeholder concerns and enhance CSR strategy making. In addition, suggestions for future research are offered to enable a better understanding of effective strategic conversation processes in CSR strategy making and the resulting performance outcomes.

This paper is a response to Ray's recent proposal that the intellectual property rights attached to potentially life saving/life sustaining innovations should become public goods in cases where markets are either unable or unwilling to pay for the creation of the intellectual property. Using a free market approach to innovation based on Western moral philosophy, we suggest that treating intellectually protected life saving/life sustaining innovations as public goods will likely reduce social welfare over the long term.

Well-documented differences in the psychology and behavior of men and women have spurred extensive exploration of gender's role within the brain, particularly regarding emotional processing. While neuroanatomical studies clearly show differences between the sexes, the functional effects of these differences are less understood. Neuroimaging studies have shown inconsistent locations and magnitudes of gender differences in brain hemodynamic responses to emotion. To better understand the neurophysiology of these gender differences, we analyzed recordings of single neuron activity in the human brain as (...) subjects of both genders viewed emotional expressions. This study included recordings of single-neuron activity of 14 (6 male) epileptic patients in four brain areas: amygdala (236 neurons), hippocampus ( n = 270), anterior cingulate cortex ( n = 256), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex ( n = 174). Neural activity was recorded while participants viewed a series of avatar male faces portraying positive, negative or neutral expressions. Significant gender differences were found in the left amygdala, where 23% ( n = 15∕66) of neurons in men were significantly affected by facial emotion, vs. 8% ( n = 6∕76) of neurons in women. A Fisher's exact test comparing the two ratios found a highly significant difference between the two ( p. (shrink)

This study focuses on the managerial issue of should social enterprises become more marketing oriented. It adapts the Kohli et al. MARKOR marketing orientation scale to measure the adoption of marketing by SEs. The items capture Vincentian-based values to leverage business in service to the poor as a measure of a Vincentian marketing orientation. A VMO is an organisational wide value-driven philosophy of management that focuses a SE on meeting its objectives by adopting a more marketing orientated approach to serve (...) the needy and poor in a just and sustainable manner. SEs that exhibit a VMO seek to understand and respond to both the needs of their beneficiaries and stakeholders. They are constantly generating, disseminating, and responding to environmental, beneficiary, and stakeholder information and develop their business propositions to more effectively and efficiently meet the needs of the poor, while guided by a philosophy of leveraging business for social good. This study of SEs in Australia found that a VMO is strongly and positively correlated with social, economic, and environmental performance. These findings suggest that SEs may benefit by leveraging marketing capabilities to better serve their beneficiaries and stakeholders. (shrink)

We argue, contra Joshua Knobe in a companion chapter, that most people have an understanding of free will and responsible agency that is compatible with a naturalistic vision of the human mind. Our argument is supported by results from a new experimental philosophy study showing that most people think free will is consistent with complete and perfect prediction of decisions and actions based on prior activity in the brain (a scenario adapted from Sam Harris who predicts most people will find (...) it inconsistent with free will). We explain why most people are "theory-lite" about the nature of mind and free will--they are not committed to substantive theories of the underlying causal structure of mind, such as Knobe's "transcendence vision". Rather, we suggest a "causal competition principle"--that an agent's actions will be deemed unfree when they are perceived to be fully caused by factors that do not include her reasons. This principle explains why people, including some scientists, perceive neuroscientific explanations as threatening free will when they are described in terms of neural processes fully causing actions to the exclusion of agents' reasons or reasoning processes. (shrink)

This paper discusses how adoption of the social dimensions of the marketing concept may unintentionally restrict innovation and corporate entrepreneurship, ultimately reducing social welfare. The impact of social marketing on innovation and entrepreneurship is discussed using the case of multinational pharmaceutical firms that are under pressure when marketing HIV treatments in poor countries.The argument this paper supports is that social welfare may eventually be diminished if forced social responsibility is imposed. The case of providing subsidized AIDS medication to less developed (...) nations is used to illustrate how social blackmail may result in less innovation, entrepreneurship, and product development efforts by the pharmaceutical industry, ultimately reducing social welfare. (shrink)

Our understanding of implicit bias and how to measure it has yet to be settled. Various debates between cognitive scientists are unresolved. Moreover, the public’s understanding of implicit bias tests continues to lag behind cognitive scientists’. These discrepancies pose potential problems. After all, a great deal of implicit bias research has been publicly funded. Further, implicit bias tests continue to feature in discourse about public- and private-sector policies surrounding discrimination, inequality, and even the purpose of science. We aim to do (...) our part by reconstructing some of the recent arguments in ordinary language and then revealing some of the operative norms or values that are often hidden beneath the surface of these arguments. This may help the public learn more about the science of implicit bias. It may also help both laypeople and scientists reflect on the values, interests, and stakeholders involved in establishing, justifying, and communicating scientific research. (shrink)

Developmental coordination is vital in the temporally coordinated appearance of cell types within the precise spatial architecture of the vertebrate brain and this, combined with the rich interplay between the developing brain and its target organs, is a biological problem of monumental complexity. An example is the genesis and subsequent integration of the neuroendocrine hypothalamus and the pituitary. Two recent papers(1,2) use the developing hypothalamo‐pituitary axis in order to gather a deeper understanding of these integrative mechanisms. In addition, they show (...) that a sub‐family of homeodomain factors, the POU‐domain proteins, play a critical role in coordinating the respective ontogenies of the hypothalamus and the pituitary. (shrink)

Much scholarship on boundary-making focuses on dyadic relationships between “us” and “them.” Yet the presence of multiple categories within societies allows for complex interactions among more than two potentially relevant groups. To capture this phenomenon and its dynamics better, we develop the concept of leveraging: the strategic manipulation of social distance among three or more constructed groups for political gain. The use of one group as a lever against another may involve stigmatizing or elevating categories of people along boundaries of (...) race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, class, sexual orientation, or other salient social markers. We theorize these processes and identify the motivations of the initiators of leveraging as well as the range of possible responses to it. We use a pair of empirical case studies drawn from contemporary Europe and additional examples from other settings to demonstrate the relevance of the concept. Conceptualizing leveraging both improves our scholarly understanding of group-making processes and offers political actors tools for interpreting and responding to a common set of strategic practices. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a wave of new scholarship on Georg Forster. At least five books substantially concerned with Forster have been published since 2017.1 This interest is hardly surprising. He t...

This paper explores the impacts of neurological intervention on selfhood with reference to recipients’ claims about changes to their self-understanding following Deep Brain Stimulation for treatment of Parkinson’s Disease. In the neuroethics literature, patients’ claims such as: “I don’t feel like myself anymore” and “I feel like a machine”, are often understood as expressing threats to identity. In this paper I argue that framing debates in terms of a possible threat to identity—whether for or against the proposition, is mistaken and (...) occludes what is ethically salient in changes from DBS. Rather, by adopting a relational narrative approach to identity and autonomy, I show that the ethically salient issue from DBS is impacts on autonomous agency—whether one’s actions and beliefs are one’s own, and how DBS may hinder, or foster, embodied, relational autonomy competences. This approach recognizes that if sufficiently significant, impacts on autonomy competences may pose a threat to one’s ability to contribute to the process of authoring one’s own life and so pose a threat to identity formation. I argue this approach resolves the confusion in the literature about whether and how DBS threatens identity and provides a complex picture of how DBS may affect selfhood by disrupting narrative identity formation and revision, distorting agency and/or undermining autonomy. (shrink)

Montefiore and Formosa (Ethics Inf Technol 24:31, 2022) provide a useful way of narrowing the Gamer’s Dilemma to cases where virtual murder seems morally permissible, but not virtual child molestation. They then resist the dilemma by theorising that the intuitions supporting it are not moral. In this paper, I consider this theory to determine whether the dilemma has been successfully resisted. I offer reason to think that, when considering certain variations of the dilemma, Montefiore and Formosa’s theory may not be (...) the most likely theory available to us. (shrink)

Michael L. Morgan is Emeritus Chancellor Professor at Indiana University and the Grafstein Visiting Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He has written extensively on ancient Greek philosophy, modern Jewish philosophy, and post-Holocaust theology and ethics.

Philosophy, theology and engineering are each characterised by striking, yet similar, low participation rates by female academics. While these disciplines seem very different, and so the diagnosis of the causes of this under-representation might likewise be expected to differ, we show a commonality of analysis in the diagnoses of, and responses to, women's under-representation. In each, we find a shared argument that concepts and methodologies central to that discipline are gendered male. We also find a shared response which urges engagement (...) in projects of critical re-imagination. We conclude with a case study of critical re-imagination in philosophy and draw some lessons from its successes and failures for the potential of gendered innovations to transform male dominated disciplines. While critical re-imagination of key concepts, presuppositions, and methodologies in these disciplines may be a necessary condition for improving participation rates by women, it is by no means sufficient. (shrink)

What is poetry’s so-called ‘form-content unity’? In this paper, I argue that the idea of ‘form-content unity’, as derived from A. C. Bradley’s 1901 lecture, has been misconstrued by Peter Kivy, who believes that it is confused and vague. I argue that it has also been misconstrued, however, by the philosophers who find the idea insightful and instructive and present themselves as defending and developing it against Kivy’s criticisms. Crucially, Bradley’s argument emphasizes that hearing is necessary to any ‘poetic’ reading (...) of a metrical poem, but this focus on sound and metre tends to be ignored. A precision of terminology—particularly a reformulation of the paraphrase ‘form-content unity’—offers an improved understanding of Bradley’s claims. The lecture, I argue, properly understood, in fact supports the call for a shift of attention away from understanding poems as ‘form-content unities’ in the philosophy of poetry. (shrink)

In this, the first book devoted to Peter Achinstein's influential work in philosophy of science, twenty distinguished philosophers, including four Lakatos award winners, address various aspects of Achinstein's influential views on the nature of scientific evidence, scientific explanation, and scientific realism. It includes short essays by Steve Gimbel and Jeff Maynes, Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Victor DiFate, Jerry Doppelt, Adam Goldstein, Philip Kitcher, Fred Kronz, Deborah Mayo, Greg Morgan, Helen Longino, John Norton, Michael Ruse, Bas van Fraassen, Stathis Psillos, (...) Larry Laudan, Richard Richards, Kent Staley, and Jim Woodward with replies to each contributor from Peter Achinstein. Readers will come away with an understanding of the current debate in multiple areas of philosophy of science and how various contemporary issues are connected. (shrink)

The study aims to measure the link between CSR and economic growth. This study investigates whether CSR expenses shown by the banks are contributing to the sustainability of an emerging economy like India. For this study, CSR spending of 21 commercial banks, on nine development areas of the Indian economy, the human development index of India, and its indicators along with the growth rate of GDP of India and state-wise GDP for the year 2014-2015 to 2017-2018 have been taken as (...) secondary data. The research techniques used are the case analysis method, correlation, and descriptive analysis. The study highlights that CSR activities are more of a myth and a far-reaching possibility in developing nations like India, where most institutions are engrossed in such activities to gain laurels and secure investors from the globe. (shrink)

This essay will criticize Peter Lamarque’s claim in The Opacity of Narrative that reading for ‘opacity’ is the way to read literature as literature. I will summarize the idea of ‘opacity’ and consider the plausibility of this claim through an examination of Lamarque’s related comments on translation. The argument for ‘opacity’, although it insists on the importance of attention to a work’s form in the apprehension of its content, involves, at the same time, a certain obliviousness to form, indicated in (...) the first instance by an unpersuasive conflation of lyric poetry and prose fiction. Through a comparison of opposing approaches to the translation of a novel written in verse, and an analysis of why the translation of poetry is generally understood to be more challenging than the translation of prose, I will argue that reading for ‘opacity’ does not adequately capture what it means to read literature as literature. (shrink)

In this installment of the Faculty Authors Series, Vance Morgan (Philosophy, Providence College) discusses his newest book, "Freelance Christianity: Philosophy, Faith, and the Real World.".

I discuss an argument given by Dorothy Edgington for the conclusion that indicative conditionals cannot express propositions. The argument is not effective against Robert Stalnaker's context-dependent propositional theory. I isolate and defend the feature of Stalnaker's theory that allows it to evade the argument.

In search for the “missing links” of queer posthumanist discourses, some nonhuman animals play a crucial role in setting up new possible ontologies of sexual diversity. However, the desire to trace “natural” evidence for sexual diversity and a non-binary gender system that goes beyond the simplistic “social constructionism” vs. “biological essentialism” dichotomy in the nonhuman world should be critically examined. In this article I analyze both the scientific and popular representations of “wild and weird” nonhuman animals that became rich semiotic-material (...) referents to human sexuality and gender diversity in order to propose “transpecies intimacies” as a strategy for overcoming the deadlock present in naturalizing and essentializing discourses. This essay focuses on the case of the spotted hyena, because this nonhuman animal functions as an important signifier and material resource for sexual differences on multiple levels of power relations – institutional, scientific, educational, somatic, discursive, and even affective. I consider how biomedical narratives on sexualized nonhuman animals employ hegemonic economies of sexual difference to build stories of a naturalized sexuality and an embodied gender difference wherein some chemical substances, like hormones, and some body parts, like genitals, serve as primary actors in this semiotic-material system. (shrink)

Decades of research have established that learners benefit when instruction includes hand gestures. This benefit is seen when learners watch an instructor gesture, as well as when they are taught or encouraged to gesture themselves. However, there is substantial individual variability with respect to this phenomenon—not all individuals benefit equally from gesture instruction. In the current paper, we explore the sources of this variability. First, we review the existing research on individual differences that do or do not predict learning from (...) gesture instruction, including differences that are either context-dependent (linked to the particular task at hand) or context-independent (linked to the learner across multiple tasks). Next, we focus on one understudied measure of individual difference: the learner's own spontaneous gesture rate. We present data showing rates of “non-gesturers” across a number of studies and we provide theoretical motivation for why this is a fruitful area for future research. We end by suggesting ways in which research on individual differences will help gesture researchers to further refine existing theories and develop specific predictions about targeted gesture intervention for all kinds of learners. (shrink)

In this study I examine some uses of connectives, and in particular co-ordinate conjunction, from a critical discourse perspective; these uses, in my view, cannot find a satisfactory explanation within current frameworks. It is suggested that we need to identify a conceptual level at which connectives function as hypo-textual signals, activating systematic law-like conditional statements, which form default specifications of consistent structured knowledge frames. I argue that an account of connectives at the conceptual level of their function that does not (...) take into consideration such tightly structured background schemata, representing both general knowledge and ideologies, cannot afford any generality. As a result, ‘deviant’ or ‘subversive’ uses of these connectives can neither be identified as such nor find an adequately general explication within existing accounts, whereas in the proposed framework such uses find a ready explanation of sufficient generality. This framework lies at the intersection of disciplines: Linguistic pragmatics, on the one hand, and cognitive science, on the other. Consequently, this proposal, too, can be regarded as a plea for crossing boundaries and joining forces. (shrink)