Distinguishing “business” concerns from “ethical” values is not only an unfruitful and meaningless task, it is also an impossible endeavor. Nevertheless, fruitless attempts to separate facts from values produce detrimental second-order effects, both for theory and practice, and should therefore be abandoned. We highlight examples of exemplary research that integrate economic and moral considerations, and point the way to a business ethics discipline that breaks new ground by putting ideas and narratives about businesstogetherwith ideas and narratives about ethics.

The work of Donaldson and Dunfee offers an example of how normative and descriptive approaches to business ethics can be integrated. We suggest that to be truly integrative, however, the theory should explore the processes by which such integration happens. We, therefore, sketch some preliminary thoughts that extend Integrative Social Contracts Theory by beginning to consider the process by which microsocial contracts are connected to hypernorms.

Artificial social intelligence (ASI) agents have great potential to aid the success of individuals, human–human teams, and human–artificial intelligence teams. To develop helpful ASI agents, we created an urban search and rescue task environment in Minecraft to evaluate ASI agents’ ability to infer participants’ knowledge training conditions and predict participants’ next victim type to be rescued. We evaluated ASI agents’ capabilities in three ways: (a) comparison to ground truth—the actual knowledge training condition and participant actions; (b) comparison among different ASI (...) agents; and (c) comparison to a human observer criterion, whose accuracy served as a reference point. The human observers and the ASI agents used video data and timestamped event messages from the testbed, respectively, to make inferences about the same participants and topic (knowledge training condition) and the same instances of participant actions (rescue of victims). Overall, ASI agents performed better than human observers in inferring knowledge training conditions and predicting actions. Refining the human criterion can guide the design and evaluation of ASI agents for complex task environments and team composition. (shrink)

In the work of both Matti Eklund and John Hawthorne there is an influential semantic argument for a maximally expansive ontology that is thought to undermine even modest forms of quantifier variance. The crucial premise of the argument holds that it is impossible for an ontologically "smaller" language to give a Tarskian semantics for an ontologically "bigger" language. After explaining the Eklund-Hawthorne argument (in section I), we show this crucial premise to be mistaken (in section II) by developing a Tarskian (...) semantics for a mereological universalist language within a mereological nihilist language (a case which we, and Eklund and Hawthorne, take as representative). After developing this semantics we step back (in section III) to discuss the philosophical motivations behind the Eklund- Hawthorne argument’s demand for a semantics. We ultimately conclude that quantifier variantists can meet any demand for a semantics that might reasonably be imposed upon them. (shrink)

We argue that informal logic is epistemological. Two central questions concern premise acceptability and connection adequacy. Both may be explicated in tenns of justification, a central epistemological concept. That some premises are basic parallels a foundationalist account of basic beliefs and epistemic support. Some epistemological accounts of these concepts may advance the analysis of premise acceptability and connection adequacy. Infonnallogic has implications for other aspects of philosophy. If causal interpretations are acceptable premises and thus justified, does the world have a (...) causal structure? If evaluative premises are acceptable, i.e., justified, is value an objective feature of the world? (shrink)

Building on the work of Sproule, Fahnestock and Secor, and Kruger, we present a specific typology of statements. In particular, we distinguish broadly logically determinate statements, descriptions, interpretations, and evaluations. We generate this typology through a series of dichotomous divisions of statements. We divide statements first into the broadly logically determinate versus contingent, the contingent into the evaluational versus natural, and the natural into the extensional versus intensional. We show that the rationales for these distinctions are well motivated and philosophically (...) important. In particular, we argue that identifying the type of a statement is relevant to showing whether or not the sources vouching for it render the statement epistemically acceptable. (shrink)

In the writings of both C. S. Peirce and Sir Karl Popper, we can find “objectivity” defined in the pragmatic sense as being in essence “intersubjective agreement.” The present paper is focused on the general relationship between the conception of objectivity in the above pragmatic sense, and the conception of objectivity in the classical realistic sense of “nonsubjectivity,” or brute otherness, as expressed by Peirce in its purest form in his category of secondness.

This book, with its attention to literature and the visual arts as well as traditional non-fiction sources, provides a distinctive, wide-ranging exploration of utopia and education. Utopia is examined not as a model of social perfection but as an active, ongoing, imaginative educational process the building of better worlds.

“The 17th century philosopher Spinoza faces a contemporary panel of fourteen philosophers. Spinoza’s Ethics, Politics, and his philosophy of mind are examined in the first half of this singular critique. The second half, devoted to Spinoza’s epistemology and metaphysics, completes the array of his ideas. Spinoza has always provoked strong reaction. He was driven from the Temple in Amsterdam for his heretical views. The next century extolled him as the savior of rational religion. Here, the 20th century begins to come (...) to terms with this most disturbing philosopher. Stuart Hampshire, William Frankena and Frederick C. Copleston are among the modern thinkers who clarify and do battle with Spinoza’s major concepts. This is a crucial and exciting work in which living philosophy makes use of its past to reach out to new ideas. The scholarly bibliography complements this unique presentation, making it an invaluable asset for students.”- Publisher. (shrink)

The servant lives within the social relations of feudal class estrangement. He is a natural moralist who keeps his eyes and his mind open, amidst the compromises, intricacies, and oppression of being a servant, and he sees and understands a good deal more than those around him. Above all, he is a craftsman of experience who, in making history with only a few resources, lives an examined life, and turns estrangement into a life lived for others. Along the way, and (...) ever sensitive to mundane hope and sorrow—even at the point of death—the servant offers educative insight into some of life’s questions. Within a broadly materialist and pragmatic framework, this article examines the concrete particularity of estrangement in terms of the servant’s actions, desires and relations with others. (shrink)

This paper argues that the cognitive sciences need to incorporate aesthetic study of the arts into their methodologies in order to fully understand the nature of human cognitive processes, because the arts reflect insights into human experience that are unobtainable by the methodologies of the natural sciences. These insights differ from those acquired by scientific exploration because they arise not from the conceptual logic of reason but from the precategorial intuition of imagination. Aesthetics provides a methodology whereby we are able (...) to understand how art enables us to experience emotions caused by sense impressions. This methodology lies at the heart of Giambattista Vico’s Principi di scienza nuova (1725-44), which attempts to account for the way we live and participate in cultural, social, and civic communities. Vico’s theory challenges certain Western philosophical presuppositions that still inform much of cognitive science, such as the relation of language to our experience of the natural world, the nature of subjective and objective representations, and the role of the arts in the evolutionary development of the human mind. In basing my approach to literature on Vico’s, Susanne K. Langer’s (1953, 1967) and Merleau-Ponty’s (1962[1945], 1968) theories, I argue that the language of literature is distinguished from conventional language use by its imaginative use of aesthetic patterns that make manifest the inherent character of the external world as we experience it. By introducing the concepts of minding, metaphor, and icon as structures of the imagination, I show how the language of poetic expression in Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach,” enables us to apprehend the ways in which we intuitively participate in the reality that underlies our conscious experience. Such participation occurs because sensory impressions of the world we experience cause modifications in the human mind that result in affective responses. Current research in the cognitive sciences increasingly indicates that such modification occurs; aesthetic study of the arts provides a means whereby we can know what it is like to experience such modifications. (shrink)

What is it for you to be conscious? To be conscious now, for instance, of the room you are in? Theories on offer divide into just two categories, labelled by Ted Honderich as devout physicalism and spiritualism. The first reduces consciousness to no more than the physical, while the second takes it out of space and into mystery. But none of the proposed solutions has worked convincingly, and the reason, according to Honderich, lies in the persistent and resilient human belief (...) that consciousness really is different. Hence his new theory of Radical Externalism, set out here and then criticised by eleven other leading philosophers, whose verdicts are in turn subjected to a full response by Honderich himself. Does the problem of consciousness survive this latest theory? Does the theory survive such sharp discussion? It is for the reader to judge, but one thing is certain — it is time for a change. (shrink)

Gay marriages (as such) are not as yet allowed anywhere but the demand for them is increasing. Most countries take a liberal attitude towards marriage: few obstacles are put in its way. But objections to gay marriages continue to be raised. These objections are refuted and the case for gay marriage is assessed through the prism of various forms of liberalism. The normative argument for allowing gay marriage is shown to be both strong and consistent with many of the values (...) upheld by the opponents of such unions. (shrink)

1. Here’s a way to think about poverty. People who live in poverty do so because they have few opportunities to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In fact the gap between rich and poor has increased in recent times due to the more wholesale adoption of capitalist practices around the world. The institutions of business and government conspire to give the poor a Hobson’s choice of minimal wage McJobs or unemployment. Neglect of both urban ghettoes and the rural poor (...) has been systematic, if not conscious. The very idea of capitalism reinforces the notion that some are meant to be poor and some are meant to be rich. Such a system must be overridden at times by government to help the poor cope with their lot. The only solution is a massive redistribution of income and a system of capitalism that is severely restrained. All of this is at best highly unlikely. Even if there were such a redistribution policy we could not count on government to execute it fairly. (shrink)

Individuals are generally held to be morally and legally responsible only for actions carried out freely and deliberately, that is to say, for actions that result from our free choice. However, there is a quite widespread view that all of our actions are the result of the scientific laws that govern our physical bodies. If this should prove to be the case, then human choice would be an illusion, and therefore -- on the generally accepted principle just stated -- personal (...) responsibility would be a meaningless concept and blame and punishment would be inappropriate responses to wicked or criminal acts. In this paper I shall argue that we need to disentangle ‘responsibility’ from ‘choice'. I shall also outline reasons for holding that responsibility is ultimately a first-person matter -- I am responsible if I feel responsible, irrespective of choice -- and I shall briefly consider some of the consequences of this approach. (shrink)

Two hypotheses concerning nonlinear elements in complex systems are contrasted: that neurons, intrinsically unstable, are stabilized through embedding in networks and populations; and, conversely, that cortical neurons are intrinsically stable, but are destabilized through embedding in cortical populations and corticostriatal feedback systems. Tests are made by piecewise linearization of nonlinear dynamics at nonequilibriumoperating points, followed by linear stability analysis.

“Decortication” does not distinguish between removing all cerebral cortex, including three-layered allocortex or just six-layered neocortex. Functional decortication, by spreading depression, reversibly suppresses only neocortex, leaving minimal intentionality. Removal of all forebrain structures except a hypothalamic “island” blocks all intentional behaviors, leaving only tropisms. To what extent do Merker's examples retain allocortex, and how might such residues affect his interpretations? (Published Online May 1 2007).

A distinction between the self and its superstructure, the ego, supports Mele's conclusions. The dynamics of the limbic system generates the self through behavior that is subject to societal observation. The rest of the brain contributes awareness that, by ingenious back-dating and rationalization, gives the ultimate in self-deception: the illusion of control of the self by its own derivative.

The nineteenth-century poet, critic and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, once characterized the mind of William Shakespeare as "oceanic". Oceans, of course, teem with myriad forms of life: is philosophy one such form in the oceanic vastness of Shakespeare 's creative genius? If so, how do we identify philosophic elements in his plays and assess the place they occupy? What sense does it make to speak of "philosophical criticism" of individual plays? How does Shakespeare incorporate epistemologies of his own time and (...) how dramatically appropriate are they? To what extent is Shakespeare of use to contemporary philosophers and how does he anticipate them; and, vice-versa, can such philosophies refine our understanding of certain issues to which literary critics may fail to do justice? That is, can philosophy take us beyond the purely literary examination of plot structure, character, poetic imagery, speech rhythms, dialogues, settings, etc. to grant us new insight into the problematical issues the plays raise? In the time at my disposal, I am going to attempt some answers to at least some of these questions, by dwelling briefly on The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. (shrink)

Published with the aim of enriching the literature dealing with the measurement of scientific and technological activities.