In this paper, we examine the interactive effects of positive affect and perspective-taking on workplace incivility and family incivility, through moral disengagement. We draw from broaden-and-build and moral disengagement theories to suggest a potential negative consequence of positive affect. Specifically, we argue that positive affect increases incivility toward coworkers and spouses through moral disengagement among employees with low, but not high perspective-taking. Data from two time-lagged field studies and one online experiment provide support for our hypotheses. These findings suggest that (...) the beneficial effects of positive feelings are not universal, and the fostering of positive feelings at work might have unintended negative consequences, namely moral disengagement, and increased incivility at work and at home. Implications for theory and research are discussed. (shrink)

Sandys, Sir John Edwin. Aristotle's Constitution of Athens. A Revised Text with an Introduction Critical and Explanatory Notes Testimonia and Indices. Second edition, Revised and Enlarged. London: Macmillan & Co., Limited, 1902. xcii, 331 pp. Frontis. Illus. Reprinted 2000 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 99-23952. ISBN 1-58477-004-X. Cloth. $75. * By the author of the standard comprehensive history of classical scholarship, A History of Classical Scholarship. This scholarly examination of the textual evidence of the papyrus of what is known (...) to be Aristotle's Constitution of Athens, which dated from 328 and 325 B.C., is enhanced by notes that pertain to the legal aspects of the work. A thorough introduction surveys Greek political literature prior to Aristotle's time and that ascribed to him, and concludes with a history of the Constitution itself. While other scholars may have already deciphered the papyrus, this work is distinguished by the provision of the text with critical notes on each page, followed by the Testimonia, which contain further evidence on the text, in the form of quotations in Greek, often providing passages in full for immediate reference. With a bibliography and English as well as Greek index. (shrink)

COnstantien Sandis speaks to Nassim Taleb about inductive knowledge,black swans, Hume, Popper, and Wittgenstein.

Philosophy of Early Childhood Education: Transforming Narratives provides an insightful reflection on some contemporary issues and theories underpinning early childhood education. The essays in this volume penned by an international group of educators are both critical and transformative, offering new insights on the practices and policies within early childhood education. Provides a critical reflection on some current issues within early childhood education Offers perspectives outside traditional narratives of early childhood Encourages the emergence of new paradigms for early childhood education Promotes (...) the value of difference, perspective, and “otherness” Features an international field of contributors from diverse geographical boundaries. (shrink)

The Things We Do and Why We Do Them argues against the common assumption that there is a kind of thing called "action" which all reason-giving explanation of action are geared towards. Sandis explains why all theories concerned with the form which any such explanation must take fail from the outset, and shows how various debates on the nature of so-called motivating reasons only arise because the participants all share a number of mistaken views which follow from the basic assumption (...) under attack. In so doing, he urges philosophers and psychologists alike to stop asking whether the explanation of action is causal, and to focus instead on its multifarious objects. This book will appeal to anyone interested in motivational psychology, the reasons for which we act, and the philosophy of explanation in general. (shrink)

What should we do about “tainted” public commemorations? Recent events have highlighted the urgency of reaching a consensus on this question. However, existing discussions appear to be dominated by two naïve opposing views – to remove or preserve them. My aims in this essay are two-fold. First, I argue that the two views are not naïve, but undergirded by concerns with securing self-respect and with the character of our engagement with the past. Second, I offer a qualified defence of vandalising (...) tainted commemorations. The defence comprises two parts. I consider two prominent suggestions – to install counter-commemorations and to add contextualising plaques – and argue that they are typically beset with difficulties. I then argue that in some circumstances, constrained vandalism is a response to tainted commemorations which effectively adjudicates the demands of the two opposing views. (shrink)

The concept of cultural safety offers a unique approach to nursing practice, based on recognition of the power differentials inherent in any interaction. It is from within the context of nursing in Aoteaoroa/New Zealand (A/NZ) that the concept developed and was subsequently integrated into nursing education. Cultural safety is based within a framework of biculturalism, and is congruent with the tenets of the nation's founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi. Clarification of the concept is offered, together with a review of (...) the historical shift in nursing attitudes that has led to the emergence of ‘cultural safety’ as a viable and valued component of nursing practice.The argument is made that cultural safety has allowed for a more reflective, critical understanding of the actions of nursing to develop. This includes recognition that nurses’ attitudes and values have inevitably been influenced by social and political forces, and as such are in part reflective of those within the wider community. Comparison between the support given by nurses in the early 1900s to the theory of eugenics and the current acceptance of cultural safety is used to highlight this point. An examination of the literature identifies that ideological and conceptual changes have occurred in the approach of A/NZ nurses to issues with cultural implications for practice. A review of background factors relating to Maori health status and the Treaty of Waitangi is presented as a necessary context to the overall discussion.The discussion concludes with an acknowledgement that while the rhetoric of cultural safety is now part of nursing culture in New Zealand, there is no firm evidence to evaluate its impact in practice. Issues identified as impacting on the ability to assess/research a concept, such as cultural safety, are discussed. For cultural safety to become recognised as a credible (and indispensable) tool, it is necessary to further examine the ‘end-point’ or ‘outcomes’ of the process. (shrink)

In his general philosophical remarks, scattered across different oeuvres, Mach subscribed to a number of doctrines. First, the thesis of the economy of science: The primary, perhaps the only legitimate goal of scientific theories is to achieve the economy of thought. Instead of recording many facts, science codifies them under the heading of laws. Instead of attending to individual diverse sensations, science postulates the existence of bodies. Then we have evolutionism: Human activities must ultimately be understood in terms of Darwin’s (...) theory. A man is a biological product of evolutionary development. But only human activities: history of knowledge, ideas, thoughts is only intelligible by the lights of evolutionary theory. Finally, phenomenalism: Sensations are denizens of the world, whereas bodies are symbols constructed in thought, chiefly to serve the purposes of economy. Are these views jointly consistent? I argue that the role of naturalism, prominent in the endorsement of the evolutionary theory, creates an unresolved tension among those views. Phenomenalism in particular is deeply revisionary. It appears to be a remnant of empiricist metaphysics casting doubt on pretty much every area of scientific discourse. The adoption of full-fledged philosophical naturalism should be able to resolve the tension without ruling out the possibility of a methodological critique of scientific theories. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe five speech practices employed by Jish Arabic speakers: greeting a passerby, forms of address, necessary expressions when talking about death, necessary expressions when praising someone, and necessary expressions when mentioning entities of “low” value. These five speech practices are described using the Cultural Scripts Approach, which employs simple, universal language, thus enhancing descriptive accuracy and reducing ethnocentrism.

For the most part, the primary driver for international businesses in establishing operations in other countries is the reduction of overall operating costs. Host countries, especially developing nations, welcome multinational corporations (MNCs) because of the perceived economic benefits that international businesses can bring to their local communities. Surprisingly, one of the most understudied, under-analyzed, and sometimes even completely neglected factors when international businesses consider setting up shop in other countries is the local culture of their chosen destination country. This paper (...) substantiates the thesis that international businesses should adapt their corporate practices to the local cultures in which they operate to achieve effective and superior businessperformance. The paper goes further in identifying corporate practices that were adapted or revised by international businesses to respond to the culture of local communities in the Philippines. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article focuses on the specific ways in which Zionist scientists studying malaria in Mandatory Palestine presented their work to international scientific circles, moving between the transnational aspects and the local aspects of their work on malaria while suffusing that work with nationalist meanings. This slippery yet seemingly unproblematic movement between the general and the specific, between the colonial world and Palestine, was a necessary mechanism of scientific exchange. In the Zionist case the work on malaria for these scientists was (...) both a marker of their belief in progress and also a sign of their devotion to a specific political and social project. The knowledge imparted by Zionist malariologists and the international reception it received lent scientific legitimacy to the Zionist project while it advanced the goals of settling the land and defining the communal borders within Palestine between the Arab population and the Jewish one. In this way, the Zionist anti-malaria project in Palestine holds a unique place in malaria research of the time. (shrink)

Commemorative artefacts purportedly speak – they communicate messages to their audience, even if no words are uttered. Sometimes, such artefacts purportedly communicate demeaning or pejorative messages about some members of society. The characteristics of such speech are, however, under-examined. I present an account of the paradigmatic characteristics of the speech of commemorative artefacts (or, “commemorative artefactual speech”), as a distinct form of political speech. According to my account, commemorative artefactual speech paradigmatically involves the use of an artefact by an authorised (...) member of a group to declare the importance of remembering a subject, in virtue of some feature of the subject. Then, I outline a variety of ways that commemorative artefactual speech can go awry. Such speech can be unauthorised, involve unfair exclusion or incorrect identification, be aesthetically inadequate, invoke clandestine explanations, and be directed at inappropriate subjects. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of my account for resisting problematic commemorative artefactual speech. (shrink)

In this paper I formulate the thesis of the Division of Epistemic Labor as a thesis of epistemic dependence, illustrate several ways in which individual subjects are epistemically dependent on one or more of the members of their community in the process of knowledge acquisition, and draw conclusions about the cognitively distributed nature of some knowledge acquisition.

ABSTRACTThis article examines accounts of the moral basis of compensatory duties that explain such duties as the continuation, in some way, of the pre-wrong normative situation. I identify, contrast, and assess three versions of this view—duty continuity, right continuity, and reasons continuity. I argue that each version is defensible, once properly articulated. The article responds to a range of objections to these views that have not received much critical attention by their proponents.

Many transnational corporations and international organizations have embraced corporate social responsibility to address criticisms of working and environmental conditions at subcontractors' factories. While CSR 'codes of conduct' are easy to draft, supplier compliance has been elusive. Even third-party monitoring has proven an incomplete solution. This article proposes that an alteration in the supply chain's governance, from an arms-length market model to a collaborative partnership, often will be necessary to effectuate CSR. The market model forces contractors to focus on price and (...) delivery as they compete for the lead firm's business, rendering CSR observance secondary, at best. A collaborative partnership where the lead firm gives select suppliers secure product orders and other benefits removes disincentives and adds incentives for CSR compliance. In time, the suppliers' CSR habit should shift their business philosophy toward pursuing CSR as an end in itself, regardless of buyer incentives and monitoring. This article examines these hypotheses in the context of the athletic footwear sector with Nike, Inc. and its suppliers as the specific case study. The data collected and conclusions reached offer strategies for advancing CSR beyond the superficial and often ineffectual 'code of conduct' stage. (shrink)

One of the central claims of the neurodiversity movement is that society should accommodate the needs of autistics, rather than try to treat autism. People have variously tried to reject this accommodation thesis as applicable to all autistics. One instance is Pier Jaarsma and Stellan Welin, who argue that the thesis should apply to some but not all autistics. They do so via separating autistics into high- and low-functioning, on the basis of IQ and social effectiveness or functionings. I reject (...) their grounds for separating autistics. IQ is an irrelevant basis for separating autistics. Charitably rendering it as referring to more general capacities still leaves us mistaken about the roles they play in supporting the accommodation thesis. The appeal to social effectiveness or functionings relies on standards that are inapplicable to autistics, and which risks being deaf to the point of their claims. I then consider if their remaining argument concerning autistic culture may succeed independently of the line they draw. I argue that construing autistics' claims as beginning from culture mistakes their status, and may even detract from their aims. Via my discussion of Jaarsma and Welin, I hope to point to why the more general strategy of separating autistics, in response to the accommodation thesis, does not fully succeed. Finally, I sketch some directions for future discussions, arguing that we should instead shift our attention to consider another set of questions concerning the costs and extent of change required to accommodate all autistics. (shrink)

In analysing the problems with commemorative artefacts, philosophers have tended to focus on objectionable monuments that honour inappropriate subjects. The problems with such monuments, however, do not exhaust problems with a society’s public commemorative landscape – the totality of public commemorative artefacts in general, and the institutions involved in their creation and maintenance. I argue that a public commemorative landscape can implicate authoritative ideas, including stereotypes about people in virtue of their group membership. This contributes to what I term hermeneutical (...) constriction – a situation in which people are given reason to rely on an authoritative subset of the totality of hermeneutical resources that they actually have access to. Critiquing and resisting these problems with a public commemorative landscape that contributes to hermeneutical constriction is fraught with difficulties. Attempts to do so render activists vulnerable to a range of serious criticisms. (shrink)

Over the course of the last 15 years, Constantine Sandis has advanced our understanding of the role that action plays in shaping our moral thought. In this collection of his best essays in the philosophy of action, Sandis brings together updated versions of his writings, accompanied by a new introduction. Read collectively they demonstrate the breadth of his interests and ability to relate to broader issues within the culture, connecting debates in philosophical psychology about motivation, negligence, and moral responsibility with (...) Greek tragedy, social psychology and literature. (shrink)

One recurring criticism of the best interests standard concerns its vagueness, and thus the inadequate guidance it offers to care providers. The lack of an agreed definition of ‘best interests’, together with the fact that several suggested considerations adopted in legislation or professional guidelines for doctors do not obviously apply across different groups of persons, result in decisions being made in murky waters. In response, bioethicists have attempted to specify the best interests standard, to reduce the indeterminacy surrounding medical decisions. (...) In this paper, we discuss the bioethicists’ response in relation to the state's possible role in clarifying the best interests standard. We identify and characterise two clarificatory strategies employed by bioethicists —elaborative and enumerative—and argue that the state should adopt the latter. Beyond the practical difficulties of the former strategy, a state adoption of it would inevitably be prejudicial in a pluralistic society. Given the gravity of best interests decisions, and the delicate task of respecting citizens with different understandings of best interests, only the enumerative strategy is viable. We argue that this does not commit the state to silence in providing guidance to and supporting healthcare providers, nor does it facilitate the abuse of the vulnerable. Finally, we address two methodological worries about adopting this approach at the state level. The adoption of the enumerative strategy is not defeatist in attitude, nor does it eventually collapse into (a form of) the elaborative strategy. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 310—311. Writing Death . Jeremy Fernando, foreword by Avital Ronell. Den Haag: Uitgeverij. 2011 ISBN: 978-90-817091-0-1 Rite and ceremony as well as legend bound the living and the dead in a common partnership. They were esthetic but they were more than esthetic. The rites of mourning expressed more than grief; the war and harvest dance were more than a gathering of energy for tasks to be performed; magic was more than a way of commanding forces of nature (...) to do the bidding of man; feasts were more than a satisfaction of hunger. Each of these communal modes of activity united the practical, the social, and the educative in an integrated whole having esthetic form.(1) Jeremy Fernando’s Writing Death is a sensitive attempt at exploring the depths and heights to which the processes of mourning can take us. Death, as an absence, renders all gestures (for what is mourning but a gesture with many faces) surrounding it at once as a possibility and an impossibility. Fernando poses questions that often elude the mourner and the mourned—the same, and different—by raising the specter of subject and object; by compelling the examination of what it actually means to mourn; and most crucially, by considering the very status of possibility itself that the act of mourning foregrounds. Mourning, he reminds us, is premised upon memory (remembrance, recollection), the shadow of forgetting upon which is perpetually cast—the inextricability between memory and forgetting haunts the living more than it does the dead. And if grief has anything to do with it, mourning can quite easily be mistaken for an attempt to remember in order to forget; an attempt, in other words, to deny death, deny the one thing that confirms mortality. As if living has anything to do with it. What, then, of writing death? It becomes an unceasing process of locating—and addressing—possibility itself: the passing as possibility; loss as possibility; impossibility as, and of, naming this possibility. In confronting the passing on, it is possible, nay inevitable, to move on, move away from the site of loss, of grief. All the while, we forget, Fernando reminds us, that mourning has little to do with the dead, and a whole lot to do with the living, the mourning self. Here, he echoes Dewey’s consolidation of rituals and ceremonies, of the dead and of the living, all as parts of a larger unity, of a social, public gesture meant to sate a private need: In trying to “get over it,” are we trying to get over ourselves? Or more than that: are we trying to get over the fact that we can never quite get over ourselves? (Fernando, 77) As if guilt has anything to do with it. And “it” continues to be the point that he is driving at, driving towards. “It” is the possibility and impossibility, death and life, memory and forgetting, lost and cherished. “It” is what eludes mourning, eludes attempts to overcome grief. Nonetheless, move on, he must. And Fernando does this in fewer moves than a 12-step program—hardly therapeutic, but intellectually satisfying. Writing Death attends to some of the pertinent aspects of the act of mourning—both as gesture and as meditation: eulogy, distress (call), tears, and the question of how (beyond ritual, beyond sentimentality) to mourn. And what’s love got to do with it? Everything and nothing. Mourning, after all, is an articulation of love, but it is also one that forces the mourner to be selective, as with myth-making, in the recollection: Remembering only ever occurs in exception to memory—quite possibly in betrayal of a memory. In this way, each remembrance is a naming of that memory, a naming of something as memory, bringing with it an act of violence. (40) Mourning is thus not only an act of fictionalizing, it is also an act of reading, to continually be compelled to respond to another, all the while keeping vigil against a reconceptualization of the dead, without, therefore, misreading the dead. This can only be done, Fernando argues, by all the while “maintaining the otherness of the other. After all, one must try not to forget that one cannot be too close—space is needed—to touch.” (82) There is also tacit acknowledgement that doing so foregrounds the fact that the selectivity of memory becomes exclusive, and concretizes into a singularity, thus negating the multi-dimensionality of a life lived – and thus killing the already dead. Writing Death is framed by two eulogies—or the approximations of eulogies; approximation because both foreground and call into question the eulogy as a genre. The first is Avital Ronell’s foreword to the book, remembering Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe; the second is Fernando’s own response to the passing of a mentor, Jean Baudrillard. Both are not merely attempts to philosophize their way out of the act of mourning. Both are in fact deeply moving pieces that remind us of the emotional possibilities that may reside within any intellectual undertaking, that the latter need not be cold and devoid of feelings. And whereas Writing Death does not attempt to make any philosophical claim for humanism, the underlying wistfulness of both pieces does suggest that there is a proper place for deep-seated human response to death. We can (and the book does) intellectualize and problematize the acts of mourning and grieving, but these do not diminish the fact that we mourn and grieve. And, framing Writing Death as the two eulogies do, Jeremy Fernando perhaps finally, and inadvertently, names “It”—it is, above everything else, Human. August, 2011 Singapore NOTES (1) Dewey, John. Art as Experience . New York: Perigee, 1934. (shrink)

Ryan Darby, Judith Edersheim, and Bruce Price (DEP) argue that patients with Behavioral-Variant Frontotemporal Dementia have intact moral knowledge. In effect, they assume a motivational externalist understanding of moral knowledge. We question this by probing the cases they present as evidence for their position.

The present research was designed to investigate the absolute and relative levels of ethical convictions of executive search consultants, or "headhunters", in regard of their search practices. Executive search consultants were defined as trained specialists who helped client organizations identify and evaluate the suitability of job candidates for top, senior, and middle-level management and executive positions. Despite frequent reports of unethical search practices in the media, results based on a sample of 184 headhunters and non-headhunter executives showed that headhunters were (...) inclined to adhere stringently to a selected set of ethical values, both in absolute terms and in comparison with the expectations of non-headhunter executives. The differences had implications not only for the integrity and continued existence of the headhunting profession, but also for the ethical development of new executive search consultants. Future research directions were suggested. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Metamorphosis of Language in Apuleius: A Study of Allusion in the NovelGerald SandyEllen D. Finkelpearl. Metamorphosis of Language in Apuleius: A Study of Allusion in the Novel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. xii 1 241 pp. Cloth, $42.50.At first glance the use of the word “allusion” in the subtitle of this book suggests an old-fashioned approach to literary analysis. Finkelpearl has, however, given a lot of (...) thought to her choice of terms. She acknowledges the equivocalness of allusions but prefers to use this word for the process of incorporating material from earlier writers rather than “reference” or “intertextuality.” In spite of her somewhat informal description of the process of allusion (“recalling, modifying, transforming, and playing around with passages”), she has made a conscientious effort to circumvent the “fuzziness and inexactitude” of identifying allusions by making vigorous use of TLL and other traditional philological aids in order to isolate words, phrases, and lexical combinations that are unique to Apuleius and his putative sources. She has also deliberately avoided applying a single theoretical model, because “Apuleius draws on a wide variety of genres from different time periods,... use[s] his sources differently at different times [and]... often maintains an ambiguous stance—between rejection and incorporation, homage and polemic—even within single allusions” (24). This “ambiguous stance” is in fact central to the thesis that Finkelpearl consistently develops in her book: In the Metamorphoses, “allusion provides a medium [End Page 471] for exploration of the fit between the novel and the genres it contains and helps the novel toward a definition of its genre” (27). She emphasizes the ambiguity of her subject from the beginning to the end of her book, stating in chapter 1 that her aim is “to examine the multiplicity of interactions between the Apuleian text and its forebears, with a vigilant consciousness of the novel’s various uncertainties” (31) and concluding that she has focused on the tensions caused by situating “an uncertain genre” within a defined literary tradition.There is no uncertainty about the structure of the book. Each of the eight chapters begins with a survey of relevant scholarship and a declaration of Finkelpearl’s place within, or outside of, the range of summarized views. The sequence of chapters also unfolds logically. After surveying in chapter 1 (“Background and Method”) the various scholarly procedures that have been used to characterize allusions, she progresses from the seemingly most simple (parody) to the most complex practices of allusion. One of the strongest features of the book is that she manages to uncover complex patterns of allusion in passages that other scholars have been content to label parodies. Good examples of this resourcefulness occur in Finkelpearl’s examination of Apuleius’ use of Sallust, one of the canonical Latin archaic models during the second half of the second century. At 1.16.2–3 the “low-life character” Aristomenes makes an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide by hanging himself with a rope attached to his bed. He addresses the bed in the words spoken by Adherbal over the corpse of his brother Hiempsal (BJ 14.22), substituting, however, grabattule for frater. Other scholars have commented on the obvious disparity between the dignified poignancy of the passage in Sallust and the low-life melodrama of the Apuleian revamping of it. Finkelpearl explains that “the choice of reference has relevance beyond its comic effect” (51), for Aristomenes’ words are “motivated by the questions posed... [by Adherbal] about life and death in the face of fratricide and injustice.” As she puts it, “Apuleius never merely defaces or satirizes; examination of his text reveals a complex thematic engagement with his sources.”In chapter 3 (“Reading Isolated Allusions”) Finkelpearl also manages to find overarching resonance in seemingly isolated pastiches. Others, including me, have perhaps been too quick to conclude that Lucius’ prolonged praise of the maidservant Fotis’ hair in book 2 of the novel is an empty piece of the type of rhetorical tour de force that characterizes the Second Sophistic. Finkelpearl argues, however, that hairstyle and other styles of appearance and dress can serve in the Augustan poets as emblems of literary doctrine and that Apuleius... (shrink)