Evidence from life science, cognitive science, and philosophy supports the hypothesis that knowledge is a central norm of the human practice of assertion. However, to date, the experimental evidence supporting this hypothesis is limited to American anglophones. If the hypothesis is correct, then such findings will not be limited to one language or culture. Instead, we should find a strong connection between knowledge and assertability across human languages and cultures. To begin testing this prediction, we conducted three experiments on Koreans (...) in Korean. In each case, the findings replicated prior results observed in Americans and were corroborated by key findings from new replication studies on Americans using materials back-translated from Korean. These findings support the theory that there is a core, cross-culturally robust human practice of assertion and that, according to the rules of this practice, assertions should express knowledge. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of an observer’s value orientation and personality type on attitudes toward whistleblowing. Based on a review of the literature we generated three hypotheses to explain the relationship between these two factors and attitudes toward whistleblowing, and these were tested using data collected from 490 university students in South Korea. The survey comprises two parts, a measure of MBTI personality types, and a section assessing value orientations and attitudes toward whistleblowing. Regression analysis was conducted to clarify (...) the influence of the independent variables. The study offers two main contributions. First, it examines what role an observer’s value orientation and personality type play in determining the attitudes. Second, it provides insights into designing customized ethical training programs and developing policy aimed at changing negative attitudes toward whistleblowing. (shrink)

In Western political philosophy, democracy is generally the dominant view regarding what the best form of government is, and this holds even in respect to promoting minority rights. However, I argue that there is a better theory for satisfying minority interests and rights. I amass numerous studies from the social sciences demonstrating how democracy does poorly in accounting for minority interests. I then contend that a particular hybrid view that fuses a meritocracy with democracy can do a better job than (...) democracy in accounting for minority interests and in having more equal rights and fair policies coming from the legislative and executive branches. Finally, I defend this thesis from numerous counters. (shrink)

It has often been suggested that people's ordinary understanding of morality involves a belief in objective moral truths and a rejection of moral relativism. The results of six studies call this claim into question. Participants did offer apparently objectivist moral intuitions when considering individuals from their own culture, but they offered increasingly relativist intuitions considering individuals from increasingly different cultures or ways of life. The authors hypothesize that people do not have a fixed commitment to moral objectivism but instead tend (...) to adopt different views depending on the degree to which they consider radically different perspectives on moral questions. (shrink)

The other major question in the history of political philosophy besides the issue of distributive justice is what the best form of government is. In Western philosophy, the received view is democracy. However, this paper challenges this thesis by presenting arguments against democracy relying in significant part on empirical data from political science and political psychology. Moreover, it presents a general case for a hybrid view over democracy for the legislative and executive branches that appends a meritocracy or rule by (...) the merited from Eastern philosophy to democracy. (shrink)

Concepts are mental representations that are the constituents of thought. EdouardMachery claims that psychologists generally understand concepts to be bodies of knowledge or information carrying mental states stored in long term memory that are used in the higher cognitive competences such as in categorization judgments, induction, planning, and analogical reasoning. While most research in the concepts field generally have been on concrete concepts such as LION, APPLE, and CHAIR, this paper will examine abstract moral concepts and whether such concepts may (...) have prototype and exemplar structure. After discussing the philosophical importance of this project and explaining the prototype and exemplar theories, criticisms will be made against philosophers, who without experimental support from the sciences of the mind, contend that moral concepts have prototype and/or exemplar structure. Next, I will scrutinize Mark Johnson’s experimentally-based argument that moral concepts have prototype structure. Finally, I will show how our moral concepts may indeed have prototype and exemplar structure as well as explore the further ethical implications that may be reached by this particular moral concepts conclusion. (shrink)

While there has been much work on cosmological arguments, novel objections will be presented against the modern day rendition of the Kalām cosmological argument as standardly articulated by William Lane Craig. The conclusion is reached that this cosmological argument and several of its variants do not lead us to believe that there is inevitably a supernatural cause to the universe. Moreover, a conditional argument for atheism will be presented in light of the Big Bang Theory.

There are many views about the structure of concepts, a plausible one of which is the theory-theory. Though this view is plausible for concrete concepts, it is unclear that it would work for abstract concepts, and then for moral concepts. The goal of this paper is to provide a plausible theory-theory account for moral concepts and show that it is supported by results in the moral psychology literature. Such studies in moral psychology do not explicitly contend for the theory-theory of (...) moral concepts, but I demonstrate that they actually do provide evidence for the use of theory knowledge at times in moral categorization and decision-making. In philosophy of cognitive science, I newly show that there is evidence that the theory-theory does apply to some moral concepts. (shrink)

The problem of error is an old argument for atheism that can be found in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. Although it is not widely discussed in the contemporary literature in the Philosophy of Religion, I resurrect it and give it a modern spin. By relying on empirical studies in moral psychology that demonstrate that moral judgments from human beings are generally susceptible to certain psychological biases, such as framing and order effects, I claim that if God is responsible for (...) making human beings such that we have these biases, this means that God is not a perfect being. The findings in empirical moral psychology create a problem for the existence of God, traditionally conceived. (shrink)

Several philosophers believe that with phenomenal consciousness and neurobiological properties, there will always be some kind of epistemic gap between the two that will lead to a corresponding ontological gap. In order to address those who espouse this hard line position, I will first briefly examine certain aspects of the history of scientific explanation. I will put forth a positive thesis that there is what I call a progressivism to scientific explanations in certain fields, where kinds of explanations tend to (...) advance or progress, somewhat analogous to how overall scientific theories also significantly advance or progress. Given the progressivism of kinds of explanations, I provide a new contention that adherents to the hard line view are not justified in making their relevant claims. While progressivism and its use against hard line views may seem intuitively obvious to some readers, I offer its first articulation and attempt to illustrate the novel virtues it brings to the table of the phenomenal consciousness debate. (shrink)

It has often been suggested that people’s ordinary folk understanding of morality involves a rejection of moral relativism and a belief in objective moral truths. The results of six studies call this claim into question. Participants did offer apparently objectivist intuitions when confronted with questions about individuals from their own culture, but they offered increasingly relativist intuitions as they were confronted with questions about individuals from increasingly different cultures or ways of life. In light of these data, the authors hypothesize (...) that people do not have a fixed commitment to moral objectivism but instead tend to adopt different views depending on the degree to which they consider radically different perspectives on moral questions. [NOTE: This is a reprint of Sarkissian et al 2011]. (shrink)

Learning and memory are inextricably intertwined. The capacity for learning presupposes an ability to retain the knowledge acquired through experience, while memory stores the background knowledge against which new learning takes place. During the dark years of radical behaviorism, when the concept of memory was deemed too mentalistic to be a proper subject of scientific study, research on human memory took the form of research on verbal learning (Anderson, 2000; Schwartz & Reisberg, 1991).

Conscious recollection appears to be governed by seven principles: elaboration, organization, time‐dependency, cue‐dependency, encoding specificity, schematic processing, and reconstruction. However, these same principles may not apply to unconscious, or implicit, memory. Implicit memory is most commonly reflected in priming effects which occur in the absence of conscious recollection. Dissociations between explicit and implicit memory have been observed in patients suffering various sorts of brain damage, in other forms of amnesia, in behavioral performance of neurologically intact subjects, and in brain‐imaging studies (...) of memory. The most popular interpretation of these dissociations holds that explicit and implicit memory are mediated by separate and independent brain systems. However, there are also compelling interpretations in terms of dual processes operating on the contents of a single memory system. (shrink)

What impact are we having on the environment around us? How can we limit the effect of human life on the natural world? These questions and more are considered in 'Advances in Sustainability and Environmental Justice' volume 13, which looks at environmental philosophy, humanity's place in the world, and how we can live in harmony with our planet.

This article reports the findings of a cross-cultural study that explored the relationship between nationality, cultural orientation, and attitudes toward different ways in which an employee might blow the whistle. The study investigated two questions – are there any significant differences in the attitudes of university students from South Korea, Turkey and the U.K. toward various ways by which an employee blows the whistle in an organization?, and what effect, if any, does cultural orientation have on these attitudes? In order (...) to answer these questions, the study identified six dimensions of whistleblowing and four types of cultural orientation. The survey was conducted among 759 university students, who voluntarily participated; 284 South Korean, 230 Turkish, and 245 U.K. Although all three samples showed a preference for formal, anonymous and internal modes of whistleblowing, there were significant variations related to nationality and cultural orientation. The findings have some key implications for organizational practice and offer directions for future research. (shrink)

This article explores the relevance of the Theory of Planned Behavior to whistleblowing research, and considers whether its widely tested validity as a model of the link between attitudes, intention, and behavior might make it an appropriate candidate for a general theory to account for whistleblowing. This proposition is developed through an empirical test of the theory's predictive validity for whistleblowing intentions. Using a sample of 296 Korean police officers, the analysis showed that attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control (...) all had significantly positive main effects on internal whistleblowing intentions, but for external whistleblowing intentions only subjective norm was significant. The implications of these findings for applying the Theory of Planned Behavior to whistleblowing research are discussed. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to investigate external whistleblowers’ experiences of workplace bullying by superiors and colleagues, and to analyze how the bullying was influenced by factors such as the support they received from government or NGOs, and whether colleagues understood the reasons for the whistleblower’s actions. For bullying by colleagues, we also examined to what extent this was influenced by superiors’ behavior towards the whistleblower. We reviewed the relevant literature on workplace bullying and whistleblowers’ experiences of negative or (...) retaliatory actions and developed three hypotheses, which we tested using data gathered from Korean external whistleblowers. Results revealed that external whistleblowers experienced work-related bullying by superiors and social relation-related and person-related bullying by colleagues more frequently, and found it more distressing, than other types of workplace bullying. Superiors’ bullying was a dominant factor affecting bullying by colleagues. Colleagues’ understanding of the reason for the whistleblower’s actions was significant in reducing bullying frequency while support from government and NGOs was not significant in reducing it. Based on these findings, practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Last year in June, British doctors went on strike for the first time since 1975. Amidst a global economic downturn and with many health systems struggling with reduced finances, around the world the issue of public health workers going on strike is a very real one. Almost all doctors will agree that we should always follow the law, but often the law is unclear or does not cover a particular case. Here we must appeal to ethical discussion. The General Medical (...) Council, in its key guidance document for practising doctors, Good Medical Practice, claims that ‘Good doctors make the care of their patients their first concern’. Is this true? And if so, how is this relevant to the issue of striking? One year on since the events, we carefully reflect and argue whether it was right for doctors to pursue strike action, and call for greater discussion of ethical issues such as the recent strikes, particularly among younger members of the profession. (shrink)

Several contemporary Confucian philosophers have posited differing hybrid views fusing meritocracy to democracy. There is a good deal of interest in a meritocracy in contemporary Confucian thought, and such a view perhaps should receive more serious consideration in liberal democratic thought since it may make for a stronger form of government when appended to democracy. In this paper, four contemporary hybrid theorists who combine elements of a meritocracy with a democracy are critically analyzed concerning an ability for their views to (...) be instantiated in liberal democracies for the legislative branch only. Finally, I provide a modified hybrid view for the legislature that I believe is the best fit for current liberal democracies. (shrink)

Overall, there’s a rich literature on free speech and hate speech. However, there’s been comparatively less discussion on hate speech that brings in empirical psychological and medical evidence on the possible health harms hate speech can have for minorities. I introduce and piece together a set of pre-existing scientific data that’s new to the philosophical literature to help sufficiently establish an argument that governments should ban hate speech. Given the adverse effects hate speech can have on one’s mental and physical (...) health, hate speech causes harm at many times. Since it causes such harm and leads to overridingly negative consequences, the government ought to regulate such speech. (shrink)

Numerous supposed immoral mandates and commands by God found in religious texts are introduced and discussed. Such passages are used to construct a logical contradiction contention that is called the moral epistemological argument. It is shown how there is a contradiction in that God is omnibenevolent, God can instruct human beings, and God at times provides us with unethical orders and laws. Given the existence of the contradiction, it is argued that an omnibenevolent God does not exist. Finally, this contention (...) is defended from several objections. (shrink)

Clinical trials play a prominent role today in medicine, but are not without controversy. These issues start from the day physicians begin their specialization process in medical school and continues onto their day-to-day practice as attendings with referral patterns and resulting financial incentives. This combined with the lack of training in basic issues of epistemology and statistics, allows poor interpretations of clinical trials to reign free. A proposal to integrate the notion of severity to help remedy these issues are made (...) by ensuring that studies are tested “As Severe As Reasonably Possible” will put P-values, multiplicity adjustments, and model checking in their rightful place. In light of this, multiple clinical trials are examined with an in-depth analysis of erroneous statistical inferences taken from phase III randomized trials, non-inferiority, early phase, as well as observational studies. Severe testing in the setting of medicine will help with alleviate some of the issues with the current misinterpretation of clinical studies. (shrink)

This volume examines the psychological basis of moral judgments and what theories of concepts apply to moral ones. It considers what mental states not only influence but also constitute our moral concepts and judgments by combining philosophical reasoning and empirical insights from the fields of moral psychology, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience. On this basis, Park proposes a novel pluralistic theory of moral concepts which includes three different cognitive structures and emotions. Thus, our moral judgments are a hybrid (...) that express both cognitive and conative states. -/- In part through analysis of new empirical data on moral semantic intuitions, gathered via cross-cultural experimental research, Park draws on this to reveal that the referents of individuals’ moral judgments and concepts vary across time, contexts, and groups. Due to this, he contends for moral relativism, where moral judgments cannot be universally true across time and location but only relative to groups. -/- This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in cognitive science, moral theory, philosophy of psychology, and moral psychology more broadly. Those interested in ethics, applied social psychology, and moral development will also benefit from the volume. (shrink)

Competent adults should be permitted to determine the course of their own lives. We may try to influence them. We may ask them, perhaps even implore them, to change their minds. But in the end, they are in charge of their lives. They get to choose their careers, whether and whom to marry, whether to exercise, and whether to have surgery.This emphasis on respect for patients’ autonomy may seem to imply that allowing patients to make their own decisions should always (...) take precedence over other considerations. Given this presumption, there has been almost no discussion in the medical literature or elsewhere about how important this value is and whether it should sometimes be balanced against and give way to other values. This absence of guidance is especially problematic in cases where respect for patient autonomy conflicts with promoting patients’ clinical interests. (shrink)

It is interesting to see Aristotle's observation of natural law in order to renew the ideal of law against the Marxist theory of society, to renounce the normative theory of the nation, and to study the liberal theory of information. All this allows us to expect the realization of social justice and human rights from the institutionalization of markets and the precondition of the boundary of the general culture, namely the communitarian ethics and the moral reformation against the genealogist tradition. (...) We find in the tradition inaugurated by Aristotle the function of ethical discussion about the common good, thus imbricating the differences stratified by the economic evolution in the polis. (shrink)

Dōgen Kigen (1200–1253 ce) is one of the most revered figures in the history of Japanese culture. A Zen master regarded by the Sōtō School as its spiritual founder, Dōgen is also considered by many to be Japan's greatest philosopher. (The other major contender is kūkai, with whose philosophy Dōgen's shares a number of features.) Possessed of a prodigious and subtle intellect, and master of a strikingly poetic style, he surely ranks among the world's most formidable thinkers.

This article reports the findings of a cross-cultural study that explored the relationship between nationality, cultural orientation, and attitudes toward different ways in which an employee might blow the whistle. The study investigated two questions – are there any significant differences in the attitudes of university students from South Korea, Turkey and the U.K. toward various ways by which an employee blows the whistle in an organization?, and what effect, if any, does cultural orientation have on these attitudes? In order (...) to answer these questions, the study identified six dimensions of whistleblowing and four types of cultural orientation. The survey was conducted among 759 university students, who voluntarily participated; 284 South Korean, 230 Turkish, and 245 U.K. Although all three samples showed a preference for formal, anonymous and internal modes of whistleblowing, there were significant variations related to nationality and cultural orientation. The findings have some key implications for organizational practice and offer directions for future research. (shrink)

In this book, leading Christian political thinkers and practitioners critique the Rawlsian concepts of “justice as fairness” and “public reason” from the perspective of Christian political theory and practice. It provides a new level of analysis from Christian perspectives, including implications for such hot topics as the culture war.

The global pandemic needs to mark a turning point for the peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand. How can we make sure that our culturally diverse nation charts an equitable and sustainable path through and beyond this new world? In a less affluent future, how can we ensure that all New Zealanders have fair access to opportunities? One challenge is to preserve the sense of common purpose so critical to protecting each other in the face of Covid-19. How can we centre (...) what we have learnt about resilience within Māori and wider Pacific communities in our reforms? How can public understanding of Covid-19 science create a platform for the future social valuing of expertise? How can we ensure that the impact of Covid-19 in New Zealand results in a more sustainable, and inclusive workforce–for instance by expanding our perceptions of the value of our workers through promoting digital inclusion? To meet these challenges, we must reimagine our existing traditions of thought, breathing new life into perennial concepts and debates. Our paper indicates some of the ways that Philosophy is central to this collective reimagining, highlighting solutions to be found across our rich philosophical traditions. (shrink)

A review with commentary on Mark A. Bedau and Emily C. Parke (eds): The Ethics of Protocells: Moral and Social Implications of Creating Life in the Laboratory (Basic Bioethics series) MIT Press, Cambridge,MA, 2009, 365 pp, ISBN 978-0-262-01262-1, ISBN 978-0-262-51269-5.