Contractualist work in business ethics as well as in economic organization theory views opportunistic behaviors as problematic since they create economic harm and are often considered to violate ethical norms. Yet, much of the empirical literature on opportunism has adopted a rather simplistic definition of opportunistic behaviors as behaviors that violate formal and/or relational contracts and assumed that instances of opportunism can be unequivocally defined by simply referring to the content of contracts. The consequence of this assumption has been a (...) disregard for factors other than the content of contracts that may influence whether exchange partners judge an unexpected behavior they face during exchange relationships as opportunistic or not. The present investigation explores the factors that shape exchange partners’ subjective opportunism judgments through two vignette-based laboratory experiments. Results from the first experiment, where subjects were asked to take the perspective of a harmed party, show that opportunism judgments are influenced by the type of the behavior, type of the causal account provided for the behavior, perceived type of the exchange, and personality traits of the actor making the judgment. The second experiment, in which subjects were asked to take the perspective of the transgressor, demonstrates the influence of perspective. In particular, victims are more likely to assess a given unexpected behavior as opportunistic than transgressors, and their judgments do not relate to the underlying factors in the same way as the victims’ judgments. I discuss implications in terms of the governance of interfirm exchange relationships. (shrink)

Kelâm tarihi göz önüne alındığında belli parametrelere göre farklı dönemlere ayrıldığı görülmektedir. Bunlardan en çok bilinen dönemlendirmeye göre Cüveynî ile başlayan kelâmın felsefileşme evresi Gazzâlî ile ivme kazanmış ve Fahreddîn er-Râzî ile kemale ermiştir. Felsefi dönem kelâm âlimlerinden birisi de Ebü’s-Senâ el-İsfahânî’dir. Kelâmın yönteminin kusursuzlaşması ve delillerinin kesinliğinin artması noktasında kaleme aldığı eserleriyle bu alana yaptığı katkı göz ardı edilemeyecek durumdadır. Kelâmın felsefileşmesiyle beraber içerik ve yöntem olarak değişen konulardan biri olan tenzîhî sıfatlar meselesinde İsfahânî’nin felsefi yöntemi kullandığı bariz bir (...) şekilde anlaşılmaktadır. Bu bağlamda o, tenzîhî sıfatları felsefi bir ifade olan “zorunlu varlık” kavramı üzerinden ispat etmeye çalışmaktadır. Ayrıca İbn Sînâcı gelenekten de haberdar olan İsfahânî, “Allah’ın zâtının aklî lezzetlerle vasıflanabileceği” şeklindeki görüşüyle bu hususta belli ölçüde de olsa kelâmcıların bakış açısını terk edip filozofların görüşünü benimsediği görülmektedir. Bu makalede İsfahânî’nin konu hakkındaki görüşleri ve Fahreddîn er-Râzî özelinde kelâmcılara itirazları değerlendirilecektir. (shrink)

Kur’ân ve hadislerde geçen müteşâbih ifadelerin nasıl anlaşılacağına dair kelâm geleneğinde ciddi tartışmalar yaşanmış ve farklı ekollere mensup âlimler tarafından birçok eser yazılmıştır. Mâtürîdî bir âlim olan Nâsırüddîn es-Semerkandî de bu çalışmada tenkitli neşri sunulan Fethu’l-ğalak fi’t-tevhîd adlı eseri kaleme almıştır. Günümüze ulaşan Arapça elyazması Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi Fatih koleksiyonunda 3142 demirbaş numarasıyla bulunmaktadır. Bildiğimiz kadarıyla bu alanda müstakil olarak kaleme alınmış olup günümüze ulaşan tek Mâtürîdî eser olma özelliğine sahiptir. Akıl ve şeriatten hareketle yapılması gerektiğini savunduğu te’vîlin belirli ilkeler çerçevesinde (...) özellikle de luğavî anlamın dışına çıkmadan müteşâbih ifadelerin muhkemlere hamlederek yapılması gerektiğini belirtmektedir. Bu noktada çizdiği çerçevede olmayan ve uç noktalar olarak gördüğü Bâtinîlerin ve Hanbelîlerin te’vîl anlayışlarını da eleştirmektedir. Müteşâbih ifadeleri te'vîl etmeyi uygun gören Mâtürîdî-Hanefî geleneğin yaklaşımını ortaya koymasının yanında geç bir dönemde yazılan eser bu konuda ele alınan ifadelerin yorumuna dair zengin ve bilgilendirici bir içerik sunmakta ve müteşâbihlerin bütünsel anlaşılması yönünde imkân sağlamaktadır. Bu çalışma kapsamında müteşâbihe dair bir giriş, es-Semerkândî’nin hayatı ve eserin tenkitli neşri dikkatlere sunulacaktır. (shrink)

Some memories are more actively cultivated than others, manifesting the obsessive and slippery theaters of contested histories. This may encourage us to explore the ways in which representations of the past are conveyed. While Holocaust awareness has grown globally, its presence in Turkish academia has been limited since the millennium. Recent studies predominantly frame how Turkey integrates the Holocaust within the settled narratives. However, public perception has been shaped by narratives of Turkish consulates saving numerous Turkish Jews from Nazi oppression. (...) This prevalent life-saver theme has become a cornerstone in Holocaust Memory, strengthened by various publications and documentaries. This research mainly investigates Turkey’s restrictive border policy and rescuing activities concerning the Jewish migration during the Second World War and its present-day recollections in today’s Turkey. Through a detailed case analysis, the study contends that popular historical beliefs differ from the facts. Ultimately it reads these accounts in relation to necropolitics that dictates which memories are allowed to live and which are rendered, emphasizing how even in remembrance, a politics of life and death exists. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility is often framed in terms of opposing constructions of the firm. These reflect, respectively, different accounts of its obligations: either to shareholders or to stakeholders. Although these opposing constructions of corporate responsibility are diametrically opposed, they are also much more fluid and mobile in certain contexts, since they can act as discursive resources that are deployed and brought into play in the struggle over shaping what responsibility means. They are less the fixed, ideological “signposts” they might appear, (...) and more like “weathervanes” that move alongside changing rhetorical currents. To show this, we analyse the Securities and Exchange Commission consultation process, and legislation, relating to the provenance of “conflict minerals”. We identify two dialectically opposed camps, each seeking to influence final legislation and with end goals in keeping with the shareholder/stakeholder dichotomy. One camp lobbied for firms to scrutinize their entire supply chain, constructing the firm as a “global citizen” with very wide social responsibilities. The second camp lobbied for a lighter touch approach, constructing the firm as a “trader”, with much narrower social responsibilities. We analyse the complex interplay between these two opposed camps, our contribution being to show how both deploy competing conceptions of the corporation as discursive resources. (shrink)

We conducted an experiment to test whether altering the saliency of information provided by experts in fictitious news stories on climate change triggered different emotions among readers. Based on appraisal theories of emotions in the psychology literature, we hypothesized that 1) news stories that presented climate change related threats as diffuse and uncertain would elicit greater levels of anxiety, while 2) stories that provided a specific target to blame would induce greater anger, and 3) those that underlined the potential of (...) technology and human efforts to solve climate change related issues would elicit greater levels of hope. We found that while all news stories concerning climate change elicited high levels of anxiety, there were statistically significant differences between the emotions expressed by participations in the expected directions. We discuss the potential implications of these findings for climate change communication and for public opinion on climate change. (shrink)

A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament, being Grimm's Wilke's Clavis Novi Testamenti. Translated, Revised and Enlarged by Joseph Henry Thayer, D.D., Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Divinity School of Harvard University. Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark. 1886. 4to. pp. 726. 36s.Biblico Theological Lexicon to New Testament Greek. by Hermann Cremer, D.D., Professor of Theology in the University of Greifswald. Third English Edition. With Supplement. Translated from the latest German Edition by William Uewick, M.A. (...) Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark. 1886. 4to. pp. 943. 38s. (shrink)

Abstract I argue that the two primary motivations in the literature for positing seemings as sui generis mental states are insufficient to motivate this view. Because of this, epistemological views which attempt to put seemings to work don’t go far enough. It would be better to do the same work by appealing to what makes seeming talk true rather than simply appealing to seeming talk. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-12 DOI 10.1007/s11406-012-9363-8 Authors T. Ryan Byerly, Department of Philosophy, Baylor (...) University, Waco, TX, USA Journal Philosophia Online ISSN 1574-9274 Print ISSN 0048-3893. (shrink)

T. A. Cavanaugh defends double-effect reasoning (DER), also known as the principle of double effect. DER plays a role in anti-consequentialist ethics (such as deontology), in hard cases in which one cannot realize a good without also causing a foreseen, but not intended, bad effect (for example, killing non-combatants when bombing a military target). This study is the first book-length account of the history and issues surrounding this controversial approach to hard cases. It will be indispensable in theoretical ethics, applied (...) ethics (especially medical and military), and moral theology. It will also interest legal and public policy scholars. (shrink)

Cosmological arguments for the existence of God face a gap problem. This is the problem of convincingly arguing that their intermediate conclusions that some first cause or necessary being exists provide evidence for their main conclusion that God exists. This paper develops a simple and innovative approach to solving this problem, applicable to many cosmological arguments. According to the proposal, the best explanation for why the necessary being is found to have necessary existence is that it is a perfect being. (...) Since a perfect being would be God, the intermediate conclusions of the relevant cosmological arguments provide abductive evidence for their main conclusions. (shrink)

The world appears to conscious creatures in terms of experienced sensory qualities, but science doesn't find sensory experience in that world, only physical objects and properties. I argue that the failure to locate consciousness in the world is a function of our necessarily representational relation to reality as knowers: we won't discover the terms in which reality is represented by us in the world as it appears in those terms. Qualia -- arguably a type of representational content -- will therefore (...) not be found in the physical world as characterized in experience or science. Instead, consciousness constitutes a subjective, representational reality for cognitive systems such as ourselves, and the physical world is a represented objective reality. I suggest that naturalistic approaches to explaining consciousness should acknowledge the non-objectivity of experience, and be constrained by evidence that consciousness accompanies certain sorts of behaviour-controlling representational functions carried out by complex, physically instantiated mind-systems. I evaluate a variety of current hypotheses about consciousness, and suggest that a mature science of representation may help explain why, perhaps as matter of representational necessity, experience arises as a natural but not objectively discoverable phenomenon. (shrink)

This text is designed to help students construct and evaluate arguments.

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the considerable challenge of sourcing expertise and determining which experts to trust. Dissonant information fostered controversy in public discourse and encouraged an appeal to a wide range of social indicators of trustworthiness in order to decide whom to trust. We analyze public discourse on expertise by examining how social indicators inform the reputation of Dr. Didier Raoult, the French microbiologist who rose to international prominence as an early advocate for using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. To (...) comprehend how these indicators came to inform his reputation, we outline Dr. Raoult's rise to fame based on discourse about hydroxychloroquine. We then discuss why we trust in experts like scientist-practitioners. This is followed by an examination of how social indicators of trust like status, epistemic authority, influence and values have informed Dr. Raoult's reputation. We conclude with recommendations for how to improve the selection and evaluation social indicators of trust and reputations. Our aim here, instead of making a claim about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine or Dr. Raoult's reputation per se, is to outline through this case study how social indicators of trust inform reputation and the challenge they present to evaluating expertise. (shrink)

In social cognition, knowledge-based validation of information is usually regarded as relying on strategic and resource-demanding processes. Research on language comprehension, in contrast, suggests that validation processes are involved in the construction of a referential representation of the communicated information. This view implies that individuals can use their knowledge to validate incoming information in a routine and efficient manner. Consistent with this idea, Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that individuals are able to reject false assertions efficiently when they have validity-relevant (...) beliefs. Validation processes were carried out routinely even when individuals were put under additional cognitive load during comprehension. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the rejection of false information occurs automatically and interferes with affirmative responses in a nonsemantic task. Experiment 4 also revealed complementary interference effects of true information with negative responses in a nonsemantic task. These results suggest the existence of fast and efficient validation processes that protect mental representations from being contaminated by false and inaccurate information. (shrink)

This paper continues a recent exchange in this journal concerning explanationist accounts of epistemic justification. In the first paper in this exchange, Byerly argues that explanationist views judge that certain beliefs about the future are unjustified when in fact they are justified. In the second paper, McCain defends a version of explanationism which he argues escapes Byerly’s criticism. Here we contribute to this exchange in two ways. In the first section, we argue that McCain’s defense of explanationism against Byerly’s objection (...) is unsuccessful. Then, in the second section, we develop an independent objection to explanationism from a different direction. If our arguments in each section are sound, then not only do explanationist accounts of epistemic justification judge beliefs that are justified to be unjustified, but they judge beliefs that are unjustified to be justified. Explanationism faces problems on both sides. (shrink)

Many pantheists have claimed that their view of the divine is motivated by a kind of spiritual experience. In this paper, I articulate a novel argument, inspired by recent work on moral exemplarism, that gives voice to this kind of motivation for pantheism. The argument is based on two claims about the emotion of awe, each of which is defended primarily via critical engagement with empirical research on the emotion. I also illustrate how this pathway to pantheism offers pantheists distinctive (...) resources for responding to persistent objections to their view, and how it might lead to more exotic views incorporating pantheistic elements. (shrink)

This article is a response to commentaries by Chris Hill, Farid Masrour and Robert van Gulick on "The Unity of Consciousness" . Topics covered in the discussion include the phenomenal unity relation, the respect in which the unity of consciousness is a necessary feature of consciousness, and challenges to the idea that the self might be a merely virtual entity.