This book traces the emergence of a modern culture of exploration, as reflected in the role of institutions such as the Royal Geographical Society and the ...

Can arguments and their properties influence the development of issue polarisation in debates among artificial agents? This paper presents an agent-based model of debates with logical constraints based on the theory of dialectical structures. Simulations on this model reveal that the exchange of arguments can drive polarisation even without social influence, and that the usage of different argumentation strategies can influence the obtained levels of polarisation.

Ethical thought experiments such as the trolley dilemma have been investigated extensively in the past, showing that humans act in utilitarian ways, trying to cause as little overall damage as possible. These trolley dilemmas have gained renewed attention over the past few years, especially due to the necessity of implementing moral decisions in autonomous driving vehicles. We conducted a set of experiments in which participants experienced modified trolley dilemmas as drivers in virtual reality environments. Participants had to make decisions between (...) driving in one of two lanes where different obstacles came into view. Eventually, the participants had to decide which of the objects they would crash into. Obstacles included a variety of human-like avatars of different ages and group sizes. Furthermore, the influence of sidewalks as potential safe harbors and a condition implicating self-sacrifice were tested. Results showed that participants, in general, decided in a utilitarian manner, sparing the highest number of avatars possible with a limited influence by the other variables. Derived from these findings, which are in line with the utilitarian approach in moral decision making, it will be argued for an obligatory ethics setting implemented in ADVs. (shrink)

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)

Consequentialism is the view that the rightness or wrongness of actions depend solely on their consequences. It is one of the most influential, and controversial, of all ethical theories. In this book, Julia Driver introduces and critically assesses consequentialism in all its forms. After a brief historical introduction to the problem, Driver examines utilitarianism, and the arguments of its most famous exponents, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, and explains the fundamental questions underlying utilitarian theory: what value is (...) to be specified and how it is to be maximized. Driver also discusses indirect forms of consequentialism, the important theories of motive consequentialism and virtue consequentialism, and explains why the distinction between subjective and objective consequentialism is so important. Including helpful features such as a glossary, chapter summaries, and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Consequentialism is ideal for students seeking an authoritative and clearly explained survey of this important problem. (shrink)

Elinor Mason has provided an account of blame and blameworthiness that is pluralistic. There are, broadly speaking, three ways in which we aptly blame -- and ordinary sense, directed at those with poor quality of the will, and then a detached sense and an extended sense, in which blame is aptly directed towards those without poor quality of the will as it is normally understood. In this essay I explore and critically discuss Mason's account. While I argue that she has (...) identified interesting aspects of the way in which we hold people morally responsible, I disagree with certain features of the account, in particular, that ordinary blame issues in demands and that there is any deep sense in which we can simply decide to take on responsibility. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that lying differs from mere misleading in a way that can be morally relevant: liars commit themselves to something they believe to be false, while misleaders avoid such commitment, and this difference can make a moral difference. Even holding all else fixed, a lie can therefore be morally worse than a corresponding misleading utterance. But, we argue, there are also cases in which the difference in commitment makes lying morally better than misleading, (...) as well as cases in which the difference is not morally relevant. This view conflicts with the two main positions philosophers have defended in the ethics of lying and misleading, which entail either that lying is in virtue of its nature worse than misleading or that there is no morally relevant difference between lying and misleading. (shrink)

Computational models have shown how polarisation can rise among deliberating agents as they approximate epistemic rationality. This paper provides further support for the thesis that polarisation can rise under condition of epistemic rationality, but it does not depend on limitations that extant models rely on, such as memory restrictions or biased evaluation of other agents’ testimony. Instead, deliberation is modelled through agents’ purposeful introduction of arguments and their rational reactions to introductions of others. This process induces polarisation dynamics on its (...) own. A second result is that the effect size of polarisation dynamics correlates with particular types of argumentative behaviour. Polarisation effects can be soothed when agents take into account the opinions of others as premises, and they are amplified as agents fortify their own beliefs. These results underpin the relevance of argumentation as a factor in social-epistemic processes and indicate that rising issue polarisation is not a reliable indicator of epistemic shortcomings. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive investigation into Hans Morgenthau's life and work. Identifying power, knowledge, and dissent as the fundamental principles that have informed his worldview, this book argues that Morgenthau's lasting contribution to the discipline of International Relations is the human condition of politics.

ABSTRACT The sense of kairos is of time as having an event-like character. Fundamental here is a split between quantitative time and a qualitatively distinct moment. The decisive moment connects the kairological to crisis. By exploring the accounts of kairos in three contemporaries responding to the sense of crisis in 1920s Germany—Benjamin, Heidegger, and Tillich—this article shows the manner in action in the kairos can be understood as both responsive and non-opportunist. Themes such as the “tiger leap” (Benjamin), the “moment (...) of vision” (Heidegger), and the “shuddering” of time (Tillich) are analyzed to demonstrate how these accounts taken in dialogue with one another give an understanding of kairos, as a displacement and disruption of time as chronos and not simply as an interruption in chronological time. Such a disruption of chronological time is a necessary condition for responsible action, giving a measure also for the present. (shrink)

States act wrongly. Sometimes, they are held responsible, or take responsibility of their own accord, to remediate their wrongdoing: they cease to act wron.

Charles Parsons’ book “Mathematical Thought and Its Objects” of 2008 (Cambridge University Press, New York) is critically discussed by concentrating on one of Parsons’ main themes: the role of intuition in our understanding of arithmetic (“intuition” in the specific sense of Kant and Hilbert). Parsons argues for a version of structuralism which is restricted by the condition that some paradigmatic structure should be presented that makes clear the actual existence of structures of the necessary sort. Parsons’ paradigmatic structure is the (...) so-called ‘intuitive model’ of arithmetic realized by Hilbert’s strings of strokes. This paper argues that Hilbert’s strings, considered as given in intuition, cannot play the role Parsons assigns to them: the criteria of identity of these strings do not have the sharpness that Parsons wants to see in them, and Parsons inadvertently projects abstract structures into his ‘intuitive model’. This diagnosis is exemplified with respect to (a) Parsons’ distinction between addition and multiplication on the one hand and exponentiation on the other and (b) his analysis of arithmetical knowledge in simple cases like “7 + 5 = 12”. All in all, it is claimed that Parsons book contains many important insights with respect to, for example, different versions structuralism, the notion of “natural number” and its uniqueness, induction, predicativity and other things, for which he is rightly famous, but that his way of drawing on the notion of intuition leaves too many questions unanswered. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Accounts of virtue suffer a conflation problem when they appear unable to preserve intuitive distinctions between types of virtue. In this essay I argue that a number of influential attempts to preserve the distinction between moral and epistemic virtues fail, on the grounds that they characterize virtuous traits in terms of ‘characteristic motivation’. I claim that this does not distinguish virtuous traits at the level of value‐conferring quality, and I propose that the best alternative is to distinguish them at the (...) level of good produced. It follows from this that a consequentialist account is best placed to avoid a conflation of moral and epistemic virtue. (shrink)

Considered by many to be one of the major influences on modern Humanistic Judaism, Felix Adler (1851-1933) was a professor of political and social ethics and a social reformer who founded the Ethical Culture movement. First published in 1903 "Life and Destiny" contains quotations from Adler's lectures for the New York Society for Ethical Culture in its early years. It covers such things as the meaning of life, religion, immortality, moral ideas, the ethical outlook, and related topics.

Ist Identität eine Funktion des Gedächtnisses? Mithilfe von Walter Benjamins Erfahrungstheorie kritisiert Felix Denschlag die Theorie des »kollektiven Gedächtnisses« von Maurice Halbwachs sowie Jan und Aleida Assmann und ergänzt sie im Sinne einer Theorie der Vergangenheitsverhältnisse. Der Identitätsbegriff wird - gegenüber der Konstruktion einer bruchlosen Kontinuität - als »kontinuierliche Diskontinuität« begriffen und dem willentlich verfügbaren Gedächtnis wird ein weit darüber hinaus gehender Bereich einer »schöpferischen Unordnung« entgegensetzt. Auf diese Weise lässt sich das individuelle Erfahrungsmoment gegenüber der intersubjektiv verfügbaren und (...) beherrschbaren sozialen Identität betonen. (shrink)

In the past few decades world architecture has seen radical changes as the result of industrialization, standardization and mass production. For Soviet architecture this half century of scientific and technical revolution along with the growth of economic potential has been the most fruitful in its history. If we return to the past and try to form a judgment on the urbanism of our day we will no doubt see that what is offered us by new cities, modern residential zones and (...) social amenities corresponds to our dreams of the cities of the future. From the point of view of the past, we have only to look at the zones of Yassenevo, Tropariovo, the Olympic village or the civic centers of Tashkent or Navoi. (shrink)