How authentic are inquiry calls made by simulated clients, or ‘mystery shoppers’, to service organizations, when compared to real callers? We analysed 48 simulated and 63 real inquiry calls to different veterinary practices in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The data were transcribed for conversation analysis, as well as coded for a variety of call categories including reason for the call, call outcome and turn design features. Analysis revealed systematic differences between real and simulated calls in terms of reasons for (...) the call, call outcome and call duration and how callers refer to their pets in service requests and follow-up questions about their animal. Our qualitative analyses were supported with statistical summaries and tests. The findings reveal the limitations of mystery shopper methodology for the assessment of service provision. We also discuss the implications of the findings for the use of simulated encounters and the development of conversational agents. (shrink)

Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) is a major figure not only in German philosophy but also in literature and religious history. In his own time he wrote penetrating criticisms of Herder, Kant, Mendelssohn, and other Enlightenment thinkers; after his death he was an important figure for Goethe, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and others. It was only in the twentieth century, however, that the full and radical extent of his 'linguistic' critique of philosophy was recognized. This volume presents a new translation of a (...) wide selection of his essays, including both famous and lesser-known works. Hamann's enigmatic prose-style was deliberately at odds with Enlightenment assumptions about language, and a full apparatus of annotation explains the numerous allusions in his essays. The volume is completed by a historical and philosophical introduction and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

Whistleblowing on organizational wrongdoing is becoming increasingly prevalent. What aspects of the person, the context, and the transgression relate to whistleblowing intentions and to actual whistleblowing on corporate wrongdoing? Which aspects relate to retaliation against whistleblowers? Can we draw conclusions about the whistleblowing process by assessing whistleblowing intentions? Meta-analytic examination of 193 correlations obtained from 26 samples (N = 18,781) reveals differences in the correlates of whistleblowing intentions and actions. Stronger relationships were found between personal, contextual, and wrongdoing characteristics and (...) whistleblowing intent than with actual whistleblowing. Retaliation might best be predicted using contextual variables. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.

Studies on why small and medium enterprises engage in pro-environmental behavior suggest that managers’ environmental responsibility plays a relatively greater role than competitiveness and legitimacy-seeking. These categories of drivers are mostly considered independent of each other. Using survey data and comparative case studies of wine firms in South Africa, this study finds that managers’ environmental responsibility is indeed the key driver in a context where state regulation hardly plays any role in regulating dispersed, rural firms. However, especially proactive firms are (...) also characterized by expectations of competitiveness gains. The authors thus emphasize the role of institutional context and potential interaction effects between these drivers in explaining the reasons why SMEs engage in pro-environmental behavior in developing countries. (shrink)

A brief overview of _A Philosophy of Cover Songs_, highlighting some of the main themes in the book. The first part addresses the nature of covers and makes some important initial distinctions. The second part addresses the appreciation and evaluation of covers. The third part addresses covers as a clue to the ontology of songs. Written to introduce a session at the American Society for Aesthetics Rocky Mountain Division meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico (July 13, 2024).

The Argument from Inductive Risk (AIR) is taken to show that values are inevitably involved in making judgements or forming beliefs. After reviewing this conclusion, I pose cases which are prima facie counterexamples: the unreflective application of conventions, use of black-boxed instruments, reliance on opaque algorithms, and unskilled observation reports. These cases are counterexamples to the AIR posed in ethical terms as a matter of personal values. Nevertheless, it need not be understood in those terms. The values which load a (...) theory choice may be those of institutions or past actors. This means that the challenge of responsibly handling inductive risk is not merely an ethical issue, but is also social, political, and historical. (shrink)

In Vytal and Hamann (2010) we reported a neuroimaging meta-analysis that found that basic emotions can be distinguished by their brain activation correlates, in marked contrast to Lindquist et al.'s conclusions in the target article. Here, I discuss implications of these findings for understanding emotion, outline limitations of using meta-analyses and neuroimaging as the sole basis for deciding between emotion views, and suggest that these views are essentially compatible and could be adapted and combined into an integrated emotion framework.

We explore the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on companies’ sustainability strategies and practices. Prior research has identified a number of factors that shape such effects, including crisis severity, resource slack, and prior investments, but their interactions have not been given much attention. We thus collected qualitative data on 25 companies in four African countries, which we analyzed inductively and iteratively through cross-case comparison and with fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. We identify two pathways associated with strengthening responses (“building on strengths” and (...) “governance gap-filling”) and three associated with restricting responses (“hard hit,” “low-road business-as-usual,” and “bunkering down”). Our findings enhance our understanding of organizational responses to crises by attending to configurational effects, by elaborating the role of prior sustainability investments, and by foregrounding the relevance of governance contexts. We describe implications for future research and managers, investors, and sustainability initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact. (shrink)

This article provides concrete examples of a phenomenological approach to empathy training, which is a pedagogical method designed for higher education. First, the phenomenology of empathy and empathy training is briefly described. Second, excerpts from training sessions in higher education are provided as examples. The examples are meant as to concretize the purpose of the training in relation to the overall pedagogical process. In addition, some clarifications are made about how a phenomenological approach can facilitate university students’ deeper understanding of (...) how empathy relate to interpersonal understanding in the we-relation. (shrink)

William James’ argument against William Clifford in The Will to Believe is often understood in terms of doxastic efficacy, the power of belief to influence an outcome. Although that is one strand of James’ argument, there is another which is driven by ampliative risk. The second strand of James’ argument, when applied to scientific cases, is tantamount to what is now called the Argument from Inductive Risk. Either strand of James’ argument is sufficient to rebut Clifford's strong evidentialism and show (...) that it is sometimes permissible to believe in the absence of compelling evidence. However, the two considerations have different scope and force. Doxastic efficacy applies in only some cases but allows any values to play a role in determining belief; risk applies in all cases but only allows particular conditional values to play a role. (shrink)

The phenomenology of bioethics is approached here in relation to the lived experience as it relates to the everyday lifeworld of persons suffering from mental illness. Taking a road less traveled, the purpose here is to elucidate ethical issues relating to sociality, using findings from qualitative phenomenological psychological research. Qualitative studies of schizophrenia and postpartum depression serve as examples. Layered throughout is the applied phenomenological argument pointing to the importance of returning to mundane intersubjectivity and the reversibility between mental illness, (...) the existential context of suffering, and sociality. (shrink)

Discussion of the “dead donor rule” is challenging because it implicates views about a wide range of issues, including whether and when patients are appropriately declared dead, the validity of the doctrine of double effect, and the moral difference between or equivalence of active euthanasia and withdrawal of life‐sustaining treatment. The DDR will be defined here as the prohibition against removal of organs necessary for the life of the patient—that is, the prohibition of intentionally ending the life of a patient (...) through organ removal. At a minimum, it is difficult not to see the DDR as grounded in a set of laws, norms, values, and practices that are firmly entrenched and have a great deal of philosophical, religious, and legal support. Obviously, the primary argument against the DDR is that it is highly desirable that we continue to procure organs for transplantation, combined with the belief that those from whom we often and possibly typically procure organs are not “really” dead. If donors are not really dead, then we are left with a dilemma: either we abandon organ procurement, or we abandon the DDR. Such a move should be taken only if the way we currently delineate the dead (those from whom it is acceptable to remove organs) cannot be maintained or defended. I will suggest that this is not the case. (shrink)

The close ties between modes of governing, subjectivities and critique in contemporary societies challenge the role of critical social research. The classical normative ethos of the unmasking researcher unravelling various oppressive structures of dominant vs. dominated groups in society is inadequate when it comes to understand de-politicizing mechanisms and the struggles they bring about. This article argues that only a non-normative position can stay attentive to the constant and complex evolution of modes of governing and the critical operations actors themselves (...) engage in. The article outlines a non-normative but critical programme based on an ethos of re-politicizing contemporary pervasive modes of governing. The analytical advantages and limitations of such a programme are demonstrated by readings of both Foucauldian studies and the works of and debates regarding the French pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thévenot. (shrink)

There is a history of thinking that photographs provide a special kind of access to the objects depicted in them, beyond the access that would be provided by a painting or drawing. What is included in the photograph does not depend on the photographer’s beliefs about what is in front of the camera. This feature leads Kendall Walton to argue that photographs literally allow us to see the objects which appear in them. Current generative algorithms produce images in response to (...) users’ text prompts. Depending on the parameters, the output can resemble specific people or things which are named in the prompt. This resemblance does not depend on the user’s beliefs, so generated images are in this sense like photographs. Given this parallel, how should we think about AI-generated images? (shrink)

This paper illustrates the relevance of Foucault’s analysis of neoliberal governance for a critical understanding of recent transformations in individual and social life in the United States, particularly in terms of how the realms of the public and the private and the personal and the political are understood and practiced. The central aim of neoliberal governmentality (“the conduct of conduct”) is the strategic creation of social conditions that encourage and necessitate the production of Homo economicus, a historically specific form of (...) subjectivity constituted as a free and autonomous “atom” of self-interest. The neoliberal subject is an individual who is morally responsible for navigating the social realm using rational choice and cost-benefit calculations grounded on market-based principles to the exclusion of all other ethical values and social interests. While the more traditional forms of domination and exploitation characteristic of sovereign and disciplinary forms of power remain evident in our ”globalized” world, the effects of subjectification produced at the level of everyday life through the neoliberal “conduct of conduct” recommend that we recognize and invent new forms of critique and ethical subjectivation that constitute resistance to its specific dangers. (shrink)

Do we violate human rights when we cooperate with and impose a global institutional order that engenders extreme poverty? Thomas Pogge argues that by shaping and enforcing the social conditions that foreseeably and avoidably cause global poverty we are violating the negative duty not to cooperate in the imposition of a coercive institutional order that avoidably leaves human rights unfulfilled. This article argues that Pogge's argument fails to distinguish between harms caused by the global institutions themselves and harms caused by (...) the domestic policies of particular states and collective action problems for which collective responsibility cannot be assigned. The article also argues that his position relies on questionable factual and theoretical claims about the impact of global institutions on poverty, and about the benefits and harms of certain features of these institutions. Participation in, and benefit from, global institutions is unlikely to constitute a violation of our negative duties towards the poor. Key Words: justice • international regimes • institutions • human rights • trade. (shrink)

The significance of mediatization in countryside settings is an under-researched topic in media studies. In this paper, based on qualitative fieldwork carried out in two rural areas in Sweden, we study how mediatization integrates the prospects of cosmopolitan social change. The current phase of the mediatization process, which imposes a more dynamic register of networked communication, nourishes a new type of cosmopolitan identity in the countryside. As shown in the study, this development is constituted by complex configurations of different forms (...) of mobility and connectivity. We argue that these spatial processes are socially structured, meaning that certain social groups are better equipped, through the appropriation of network capital, for turning cosmopolitan dispositions into a transformative resource, a ‘cosmopolitan politics of place’. Such alterations of the social structure may successively destabilize the relationship between ‘the urban’ and ‘the rural’. (shrink)

I propose and discuss some principles that I believe are substantial for perception, various kinds of memory, expectations and the capacity for imagination in the mammal brain, as well as for the design of a biologically inspired artificial cognitive architecture. I also suggest why these same principles could explain our ability to represent novel concepts and imagine non-existing and perhaps impossible objects, while there are still limits to what we can imagine and think about. Some ideas regarding how these principles (...) could be relevant for an autonomous agent to become functionally conscious are discussed as well. (shrink)

This paper deals with the relation between Nicholas of Cusa and the Dutch philosopher Heymericus de Campo. Nicholas is celebrated for his rather positive attitude towards Islam. In De pace fidei (1453) he presents the vision of una religio in rituum varietate and in his Cribratio Alkorani (1460/61) Nicholas tries to prove Christian dogmas on the basis of the Koran. This idea he had discussed with his Dutch friend several decades earlier. In his Disputatio de potestate ecclesiastica (1433/34) Heymeric scrutinizes (...) the question, whether the highest authority in the church belongs to the pope or the council, on the basis of the Koran. He presents ten arguments in favour of the council and one in favour of the pope. This shows that Nicholas developed parts of his exceptional thought in conversation with Heymeric and suggests that a closer examination of Heymeric's texts will reveal a new side of the young Cusanus. (shrink)

In recent years, much work has been done on the role of images in Hobbes. But there is an unsolved riddle with regard to the famous frontispiece of Leviathan (1651). Why is there nothing monstrous in the sovereign body depicted, despite the fact that it is named for a Biblical sea monster? In this article it is argued that there is a monster just barely hidden in the image and that the iconographical tradition helps us rediscover this creature. We argue (...) that this monstrosity serves a theoretical and political purpose pertaining to fear and imagery within Hobbes’s overall project and in the political context of his time. Moreover, we argue that the discovery of the hitherto unknown monster should make political theory and intellectual history sensitive to the role played by physical images in Hobbes as well as in political thought at large. (shrink)

Kyle Stanford has recently claimed to offer a new challenge to scientific realism. Taking his inspiration from the familiar Pessimistic Induction (PI), Stanford proposes a New Induction (NI). Contra Anjan Chakravartty’s suggestion that the NI is a ‘red herring’, I argue that it reveals something deep and important about science. The Problem of Unconceived Alternatives, which lies at the heart of the NI, yields a richer anti-realism than the PI. It explains why science falls short when it falls short, and (...) so it might figure in the most coherent account of scientific practice. However, this best account will be antirealist in some respects and about some theories. It will not be a sweeping antirealism about all or most of science. (shrink)

These are details of research conducted in November and December 2007. The file is meant as a supplement to publication, and I have not attempted here to provide any analysis of the results.

Der Beitrag diskutiert Kriterien der Textauswahl für die Lektüre biographischer und historiographischer Texte im Lateinunterricht am Beispiel der Viten des Nepos. Dabei wird auch ein allgemeiner Überblick über Kriterien der Lektüreauswahl gegeben und die Geschichte der Neposlektüre im Lateinunterricht nachgezeichnet. Es werden Argumente für die Lektüre der Neposviten unter verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten diskutiert.

In diesem Aufsatz diskutiere ich eine der Grundideen des aristotelischen Naturalismus – die auf Peter Geach zurückgehende These, dass der Ausdruck ‚gut‘ nur attributiv sinnvoll verwendet werden könne. Dieses Verständnis des Guten fokussiert einseitig auf den Kontext von Evaluationen und lässt damit den Zusammenhang von Güte und Streben außer Acht. Ich zeige, dass Aristoteles durchaus eine Klasse absoluter Güter kennt, die begrifflich nicht auf eine bestimmte Art von Lebewesen begrenzt sind und von denen mithin nicht nur im attributiven Sinn gesprochen (...) werden kann. (shrink)

Die Beiträge dieses Bandes machen deutlich, dass die Untersuchung der ontologischen Grundlagen der aristotelischen Ethik ein breites Spektrum an philosophischen Fragen betrifft, die in der aktuellen Diskussion noch nicht zureichend beantwortet sind. Diese betreffen sowohl die aristotelische Ethik selbst als auch die aktuellen Versuche einer systematischen Wiederaneignung derselben in der praktischen Philosophie. Dieser Band soll einen Beitrag dazu leisten, in diesen Fragen zu größerer Klarheit zu gelangen.

Als die Osmanen im 15. Jahrhundert immer weiter nach Europa vordrangen und die Christenheit eine militärische Niederlage nach der anderen kassierte, entwickelte seit dem Basler Konzil (1431-1449) eine Gruppe führender Philosophen, Humanisten und Theologen eine Alternative zu Krieg und Kreuzzügen: die friedliche Bekehrung der Muslime. Ein Netzwerk um Nikolaus von Kues, Heymericus de Campo, Johannes von Segovia, Enea Silvio Piccolomini und Georg von Trapezunt erarbeiteten mit- und gegeneinander höchst originelle philosophische und rhetorische Argumentationen. Beispielsweise erdachten sie Pläne für eine Friedenskonferenz (...) mit den Muslimen und versuchten, den Koran selbst gegen den Islam ins Feld zu führen, womit sie übrigens die Basis für die Islamstudien der Neuzeit legten. Dieses Buch handelt von einem spannenden propagandistischen Feldzug und gewährt neue Einblicke in Geschichte, Gedankenwelt und Islamrezeption des Spätmittelalters und der Renaissance. (shrink)

In this special section, three target articles present three different perspectives on emotion and how it is implemented in the human brain. Fundamental issues are discussed such as the nature and organization of emotion’s representation in the brain and the best approaches for elucidating emotion’s neural basis. Comments and author replies further discuss these issues and explore their interconnections. A common theme of the target articles and commentaries is that multiple approaches and perspectives must be integrated across all levels of (...) analysis to understand the neural basis of emotion. (shrink)

I examine two accounts of personhood: one by Thomas Aquinas, which basically draws on the doctrine of analogia entis, and another by Augustine, which focuses on the trinitarian structure of the human mind. I argue that both accounts, despite their differences, complement each other and thus contribute to a fuller understanding of human personhood.