In a recent contribution to Grazer Philosophische Studien, Booth argues that for S to have an epistemic reason to ψ means that if S ψ's then he will have more true beliefs and less false beliefs than if he does not ψ. After strengthening this external account in response to the objection that one can improve one's epistemic state in other fashions, e.g. by having a gain in true beliefs which outweighs one's gain in false beliefs, I provide a (...) challenge to it. My main objection, which I advance with the aid of several examples, is that such epistemic reasons could not motivate any action whatsoever. I close by developing an alternative account, which avoids this problem by appeal to internal considerations. (shrink)
Most models of response time (RT) in elementary cognitive tasks implicitly assume that the speed-accuracy trade-off is continuous: When payoffs or instructions gradually increase the level of speed stress, people are assumed to gradually sacrifice response accuracy in exchange for gradual increases in response speed. This trade-off presumably operates over the entire range from accurate but slow responding to fast but chance-level responding (i.e., guessing). In this article, we challenge the assumption of continuity and propose a phase (...) transition model for RTs and accuracy. Analogous to the fast guess model (Ollman, 1966), our model postulates two modes of processing: a guess mode and a stimulus-controlled mode. From catastrophe theory, we derive two important predictions that allow us to test our model against the fast guess model and against the popular class of sequential sampling models. The first prediction—hysteresis in the transitions between guessing and stimulus-controlled behavior—was confirmed in an experiment that gradually changed the reward for speed versus accuracy. The second prediction—bimodal RT distributions—was confirmed in an experiment that required participants to respond in a way that is intermediate between guessing and accurate responding. (shrink)
Modal arguments like the Knowledge Argument, the Conceivability Argument and the Inverted Spectrum Argument could be used to argue for experiential primitivism; the view that experiential truths aren’t entailed from nonexperiential truths. A way to resist these arguments is to follow Stoljar (Ignorance and imagination. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006) and plead ignorance of a type of experience-relevant nonexperiential truth. If we are ignorant of such a truth, we can’t imagine or conceive of the various sorts of scenarios that are (...) required to make these arguments sound. While I am sympathetic to this response, in this article I will argue that we have good reason to believe that this particular ignorance hypothesis is false. (shrink)
This response defends the relevance and indeed the necessity of the “grassroots archival perspective” in exposing the errors of transcription, omission, dating, etc. in the “German originals”, recording the erratic history of the Heidegger-Gesamtausgabe and its largely posthumous editorial principles, and tracing the genealogy and development of Heidegger’s shifting conceptual constellations. Further suggestions are made toward improving the readability of the forthcomingnew English translation of the Beiträge. A thoroughgoing grammatology of be-ing is offered as a more adequate “alternative” to (...) the verbally superficial framework propounded by the Translators’ Foreword of the Contributions. (shrink)
The study of South Asian ethics presents a variety of problems for the comparative ethicist. This response focuses on one such problem relating to Hinduism: the pervasive use of nonsystematic lists as a source of ethical injunctions and guidelines. The author demonstrates how an indigenous hermeneutic may unpack a list that contains the gift of fearlessness among other gifts. The source of this interpretation is Pūrva Mīmāṃsā, an ancient Indian school of philosophy that specialized in language and the application (...) of sacrificial logic to law and ethics. The same principles that allowed ritual specialists to sort out a huge array of rules into proper injunctions also allow us to make sense of ethical principles embodied in puzzling lists of concrete items. (shrink)
The following reflections were originally an oral response to issues raised in Lee Yearley's presentation in May 2009 at Harvard Divinity School. As written here, they follow upon his oral and now written comments, highlighting key issues and points for development, drawing on this respondent's expertise in comparative and Hindu studies.
I argue that Meeker is mistaken in two crucial respects. First, contrary to both myself and Plantinga, he treats exclusivism as a theory about the relation between the religions, and then claims that it is superior to the pluralist theory. But he does not say what his exclusivist theory is. Second, he bases his claim of a fundamental self-contradiction in my pluralist position on a view which I disavow, namely that altruism is the core of religion. He omits the central (...) idea of a profound reorientation in response to the Real, of which altruism is a manifestation. (Published Online April 7 2006). (shrink)
I examine the phenomenological philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre as possible responses to contemporary studies of interpersonal relatedness in cognitive science, especially the experimental studies of infant's imitating simple facial gestures of adults. I discuss the implications and the challenges raised by the experimental studies to the dominant phenomenological accounts of intersubjectivity, but also envision how phenomenology may help to interpret the findings about infantile imitation in ways that favor the embodied perceptual connectedness between the self and the other, without (...) recourse to the inner private mind postulate endorsed by the theory of mind and shared by the experimental researchers of imitation. (shrink)
The challenge from the sophists with whom Plato is confronted is: Who can prove that the just man without power is happy whereas the unjust man with power is not? This challenge concerns the basic issue of politics: the relationship between justice and happiness. Will the unjust man gain the exceptional happiness of the strong by abusing his power and by injustice? The gist of Plato’s reply is to speak not of justice but of intrinsic justice, i.e., the strength of (...) virtue which, in his account, is the fundamental good of man. Nevertheless, many contend that intrinsic justice is actually injustice, for the division of power in the state is undemocratic while in the soul, the suppression of desire by the reason. Plato’s advocacy of hierarchical, elite political system has enraged democrats, while his idea of philosopher king has enraged the aristocrats as well. So, who will appreciate Plato’s effort? (shrink)
Abstract This paper is a brief and informal response to Professor P. C. Potgieter's paper Moral Education in South Africa which appeared in the January 1980 edition of this Journal (Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 130?3). In response to Potgieter the author attempts to present some of the more obvious philosophical and sociological inconsistencies and problems appearing in Potgieter's paper. He concludes, basically, that Potgieter has assumed a marked consensual model of South African society and, therefore, his analysis (...) serves only to misinform the reader as to the complexities of moral education in South Africa. (shrink)
In this rejoinder to Eric Scerri's response to my first comment on his paper on the reduction of chemistry to physics, the main point concerns laws in chemistry. But other themes touched upon include the assumptions involved in ab initio calculations, the question of what is reduced to what on Scerri's view, and the significance he attaches to the term "naturalism".
In this paper I examine the claim that businesspersons have what might be called "ethical immunity" with respect to the duty not to deceive. According to this ethical immunity claim, businesspersons are exempt from the ordinary ethical prohibition against deception; and widespread business deception is therefore ethically permissible. I focus on two arguments for the claim. One of the arguments, which has been presented by Albert Carr, relies upon an analogy between business on the one hand, and games in which (...) deception is permitted, on the other. The second argument is based upon the notion that exceptions to ethical duties may sometimes be justified on prudential grounds. In response to the arguments, I try to show that neither one provides strong support for the ethical immunity claim. (shrink)
In this issue, Pila (2009) has criticised the recommendations made by requirements engineers involved in the design of a grid technology for the support of distributed readings of mammograms made by Jirotka et al. (2005). The disagreement between them turns on the notion of “biographical familiarity” and whether it can be a sound basis for trust for the performances of professionals such as radiologists. In the first two sections, this paper gives an interpretation of the position of each side in (...) this disagreement and their recommendation for the design of technology for distributed reading, and in the third the underlying reasons for this disagreement are discussed. It is argued that Pila, in attempting to make room for mistrust as well as trust, brings to the fore the question of having and reflecting upon reasons for trust or mistrust. Pila holds that biographical familiarity is not a sound reason for trust/mistrust, as it seems to obliterate the possibility of mistrust. In response to her proposal, an analysis is proposed of the forms of trust involved in biographical familiarity. In particular, implicit trust is focused upon—as a form of trust in advance of reasons, and as a form of trust contained (in the logical sense) within other reasons. It is proposed that implicit trust has an important role in establishing an intersubjectively shared world in which what counts as a reason for the acceptability of performances such as readings of X-rays is established. Implicit trust, therefore, is necessary for professionals to enter into a “space of reasons”. To insist upon judgements made in the absence of the form of implicit trust at play in biographical familiarity is to demand that radiologists (and other relevantly similar professionals) make judgements regarding whether to trust or mistrust on the basis of reasons capable of being reflected upon, but at the same time leave them without reasons upon which to reflect. (shrink)
Forty years of experimentation on class inclusion and its probabilistic relatives have led to inconsistent results and conclusions about human reasoning. Recent research on the conjunction "fallacy" recapitulates this history. In contrast to previous results, we found that a majority of participants adhere to class inclusion in the classic Linda problem. We outline a theoretical framework that attributes the contradictory results to differences in statistical sophistication and to differences in response mode-whether participants are asked for probability estimates or ranks-and (...) propose two precise cognitive algorithms for ranking probabilities. Our framework allows us to make novel predictions about when and why people adhere to class inclusion. Evidence obtained in several studies supports these predictions and demonstrates that the proposed ranking algorithms can account for about three-quarters of participants' inferences in the Linda problem. (shrink)
This essay replies to four critics of In Defense of Kant’s Religion (IDKR). In reply to Gordon E. Michalson, Jr., I argue that the best pathway for understandingKant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Religion) is to conduct close textual analysis rather than giving up the art of interpretation or allowing meta-considerations surrounding Kant’s personal and political circumstances to govern one’s interpretation. In response to George di Giovanni, I contend that his critique is dismissive of theologically robust readings (...) of Kant for reasons that have very little to do with what Religion actually asserts. Pamela Sue Anderson’s essay, I argue, reads Kant on God according to an empirically-biased stream of British interpretation which makes Kant’s transcendental philosophy appear foreign to its rationalist heritage. Lastly, in response to Stephen R. Palmquist, I suggest that his reading of Kant’s two experiments is done not only in a vacuum, but also according to a perspectival interpretation of Kant that goes beyond what Kant’s writings actually maintain. (shrink)
The 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami damaged the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. Prime Minister Naoto Kan took this crisis seriously, and made himself personally involved with damage control, especially during the first week. This study examines the responses to the incident by the prime minister's office.
Research shows that a culture of consumerism and materialism has a dramatic and negative impact on children's physical and psychological health. Psychologists have a duty to act to reverse this trend. Information on why and how to act is the key. This article explores the use of psychology to improve the effectiveness of advertising to youth and details the harm suffered by children as a result of some of this advertising. A discussion of ethical considerations related to specific guiding principles (...) and ethical standards of the 2002 American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics Code frames why action is imperative. Actions for psychologists to take in applying the 2002 APA Ethics Code are suggested herein. (shrink)
This paper offers an imminent interpretation of Kant's political teleology in the context of his response to Moses Mendelssohn in Theory and Practice III concerning prospects of humankind's moral progress. The paper assesses the nature of Kant's response against his mature political philosophy in the Doctrine of Right . In `Theory and Practice III' Kant's response to Mendelssohn remains incomplete: whilst insisting that individuals have a duty to contribute towards humankind's moral progress, Kant has no conclusive answer (...) as to how individuals might act on that duty. `Theory and Practice III' lacks a clear conception of the distinctness of political morality from the domain of virtue; Kant's resort to teleological argumentation is indicative of his lack of an account of instituting Right. The latter can be found in the Doctrine of Right —yet Kant's earlier teleological arguments contribute crucially to the development of his mature morality of Right. Key Words: inborn duty • moral progress • political teleology • principles of Right. (shrink)
: A central claim of Longino's contextual empiricism is that scientific inquiry, even when "properly conducted", lacks the capacity to screen out the influence of contextual values on its results. I'll show first that Longino's attack against the epistemic integrity of science suffers from fatal empirical weaknesses. Second I'll explain why Longino's practical proposition for suppressing biases in science, drawn from her contextual empiricism, is too demanding and, therefore, unable to serve its purpose. Finally, drawing on Bourdieu's sociological analysis of (...) scientific communities, I'll sketch an alternative view of scientific practice reconciling a thoroughly social view of science (such as Longino's) with a defense of its epistemic integrity. (shrink)
For many reasons mainstream Hegel scholarship has disregarded Hegel's interests in epistemology, hence also his response to scepticism. From the points of view of defenders and critics alike, it seems that 'Hegel' and 'epistemology' have nothing to do with one another. Despite this widespread conviction, Hegel was a very sophisticated epistemologist whose views merit contemporary interest. This article highlights several key features and innovations of Hegel's epistemology-including his anti-Cartesianism, fallibilism, realism (sic) and externalism both about mental content and about (...) justification-by considering his systematic responses to Pyrrhonian, Humean, Cartesian and Kantian scepticism. (shrink)
For a biological anthropologist interested in the prehistory of religion, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen's book is welcome and resonant. Van Huyssteen's central thesis is that humans' capacity for spirituality emerges from a transformation of cognition and emotions that takes place in the symbolic realm, within Homo sapiens and apart from biology. To his thesis I bring to bear three areas of response: the abundant cognitive and emotional capacities of living apes and extinct hominids; the role of symbolic ritual in (...) the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens; and the closely intertwined nature of biology and culture in the workings of evolutionary change. (shrink)
The paper defends a neo-Lockean view of secondary qualities, in particular color, according to which the being of a given color amounts to having the disposition to produce in normal viewers under normal circumstances the response of seeing an objective manifest simple color. It also defends the view that the naïve color-concept, the simple color concept, so to speak, is a fully objective property. The defense of this view is carried against its nearest cousin , the view proposed and (...) defended by Philip Pettit and Frank Jackson, according to which the naive color concept is response dependent, whereas color itself is fully objective. It is argued that the neo-Lockean alternative better captures the phenomenology of color, and better predicts or accounts for the dramatic character of the historical scientific discoveries (of Newton and his followers). Against metaphysical response dependence, the paper proposes a brief positive argument from the unity of color properties, and a criticism of Jackson’s counter-argument against metaphysical response-dependence from the naïve intuitions about causal properties of color. (shrink)
manner. The construction of the space-time structure that describes the dynamics of the neural network in a causal manner is a non-trivial problem. I critically review the idea of response selectivity as is applied to.
In this article I explore ways to argue about punishment of personal representations in virtual reality. I will defend the idea that such punishing might sometimes be morally required. I offer four different lines of argument: one consequentialistic, one appealing to an idea of appropriateness, one using the notion of organic wholes, and one starting from a supposed inability to determine the limits of the extension of the moral agent. I conclude that all four approaches could, in some cases, justify (...) punishing a virtual reality representation; an avatar. As a consequence of my conclusion, I suggest that our institutionalized criminal justice system must be broadened in scope and punitive measures, in order to cover the new and difficult cases arising in virtual reality. (shrink)
The ethical behaviour and social responsibility of private companies, and in particular large corporations, is an important area of enquiry in contemporary social, economic and political thinking. In the past, a company's behaviour would be considered responsible as long as it stayed within the law of the society in which it operated or existed. Although this may be necessary, it is no longer sufficient. In this paper, we examine an energy company's response to an ethical incident in New Zealand (...) which prompted different responses across the country about the role of business in society. Thus, we argue that when a corporation is accused of unethical behaviour, executives of the company are usually compelled to offer responses to defend their actions and corporate image. Further, we use communicative response model, social issue life cycle theory, and organisational learning, to analyse the incident and how the company responded. Using social issues life cycle theory and organisational learning theory, we demonstrate that sustained pressure can potentially trigger a change of strategy that may serve to improve the ethical posture of a corporation and thereby improve the corporate image long term. We conclude that, although corporations may understand the significance of social issues to the performance and success of their business, this same understanding does not always translate into meaningful social action. (shrink)
Is Knowledge a Duty? Yes, It Is, and We Also Have to “Respect People As Things”, At Least in Our Technological World: Response to Bernd Carsten Stahl’s Review of Morality in a Technological World: Knowledge as Duty Content Type Journal Article Pages 161-164 DOI 10.1007/s11023-010-9179-x Authors Lorenzo Magnani, University of Pavia Department of Philosophy Piazza Botta 6 27100 Pavia Italy Journal Minds and Machines Online ISSN 1572-8641 Print ISSN 0924-6495 Journal Volume Volume 20 Journal Issue Volume 20, Number 1.
This study examines the impact of a social desirability response bias as a personality characteristic (self-deception and impression management) and as an item characteristic (perceived desirability of the behavior) on self-reported ethical conduct. Findings from a sample of college students revealed that self-reported ethical conduct is associated with both personality and item characteristics, with perceived desirability of behavior having the greatest influence on self-reported conduct. Implications for research in business ethics are drawn, and suggestions are offered for reducing the (...) effects of a socially desirable response bias. (shrink)
This article presents a response to a recent article by Yotam Lurie and Robert Albin in which they discuss and present the merits of casuistry as a method for resolving moral dilemmas in business, principally by developing 'edifying' perspectives on the situation, and in doing so highlight the shortcomings of principles (such as the categorical imperative) in generating insights and thereby moral choices. The present article accepts the importance of cases and examples as a source of insight, but argues (...) that the process of conceptualisation involved in understanding these necessarily involves some reference to principles. However, principles and cases are best seen as complementary to the ethical decision-making process rather than in opposition. The complementary functions of these are highlighted in processes such as reflection upon experience, in applications of moral imagination and in the integration of emotive and cognitive elements in ethical choice. (shrink)
Gender is one of the most frequently studied variables within the ethics literature. In prior studies that find gender differences, females consistently report more ethical responses than males. However, prior research also indicates that females are more prone to responding in a socially desirable fashion. Consequently, it is uncertain whether gender differences in ethical decision-making exist because females are more ethical or perhaps because females are more prone to the social desirability response bias. Using a sample of 30 scenarios (...) from prior studies that find gender differences, we examine whether these gender differences remain robust once social desirability is controlled for in the analysis. Our data suggest that the effect of gender on ethical decision-making is largely attenuated once social desirability is included in the analysis. In essence, the social desirability response bias appears to be driving a significant portion of the relationship between gender and ethical decision-making. We discuss several important research implications of this study. (shrink)
There is evidence of continued food insecurity and malnutrition in Pakistan despite significant progress made in terms of food production in recent years. According to “Vision 2030” of the Planning Commission of Pakistan, about half of the population in the country suffers from absolute to moderate malnutrition, with the most vulnerable being children, women, and elderly among the lowest income group. The Government of Pakistan has been taking a series of policy initiatives and strategic measures to combat food insecurity issues. (...) These range from increasing production to food imports, implementation of poverty reduction strategies, nutritional improvement programs, as well as provision of social safety nets. The article aims to instill some fresh thinking into the debate regarding the challenges of food security. It underscores the limitations of hitherto policy response, and suggests crucial measures to improve the present grim scenario. Policy makers, planners, practitioners, and academicians in countries with comparable socio-political and economic setup can view this discussion as a case study and may apply the findings in their domain accordingly. (shrink)
When sharing a task with another person that requires turn taking, as in doubles games of table tennis, performance on the shared task is similar to performing the whole task alone. This has been taken to indicate that humans co-represent their partner’s task share, as if it were their own. Task co-representation allows prediction of the other’s responses when it is the other’s turn, and leads to response conflict in joint interference tasks. However, data from our lab cast doubt (...) on the view that task co-representation and resulting response conflict are the only or even primary source of effects observed in task sharing. Recent findings furthermore suggest another potential source of interference in joint task performance that has been neglected so far: Self-other discrimination and conflict related to agent identification (i.e., determining whether it is “my” or the other’s turn). Based on these findings we propose that participants might not always co-represent what their partner is supposed to do, but instead co-represent that another agent is responsible for part of the task, and when it is his turn. We call this account the actor co-representation account. (shrink)
In this paper we analyze results from 114 face-to-face qualitative interviews of people who had evacuated from the New Orleans area in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, interviews that were completed within weeks of the 2005 storm in most cases. Our goal was to understand the role information and knowledge played in people's decisions to leave the area. Contrary to the conventional wisdom underlying many disaster communication studies, we found that our interviewees almost always had extensive storm-related information from a (...) variety of sources, including media reports and (in many cases) other background knowledge gleaned from experiences with previous storms, often from interpersonal sources. However, consistent with a theme in communication research that has been identifiable since at least the 1940s, interpersonal communication networks were most often what ultimately caused these individuals to act on this information, and therefore those with “weak ties” (a concept borrowed from sociology) to the broader “mainstream” community may have been disadvantaged, slower to leave, and thus more vulnerable to the storm's main effects. From our evidence, the end result was less a function of discrimination as it was one of differential activation of a relevant social network. These results argue for the rejection of a “deficit model” that assumes varied reactions to natural disaster result from some kind of an information deficiency, and remind us that behavior under such circumstances is the result of a process of collective behavior, not only individual cognition. (shrink)
I have before me a letter dated January 5, 2000 from Bradford Wilson, the executive director of the NAS. It begins, “I really enjoyed your contribution to the recent symposium in the January issue of First Things, so much so that I’ve also decided to invite you to join the NAS. Many of your fellow contributors including Robert George, Jeffrey Satinover, and Father Neuhaus are among our current members, and I think you’d find it well worth your while if you (...) joined ranks with us yourself.”. (shrink)
On pages 490-491, in describing the results of Experiment 2, the authors state that out of a total of 3840 responses, only 355 (or 9%) fell outside the response deadlines. In fact, the total number of responses in Experiment 2 was 3200 and so the 355 responses represented 11%, not 9%, of the total. This error has no other implications. The authors are grateful to Peter Graf (personal communication, March 12, 2000) for pointing out the error.
There is evidence of continued food insecurity and malnutrition in Pakistan despite significant progress made in terms of food production in recent years. According to “Vision 2030” of the Planning Commission of Pakistan, about half of the population in the country suffers from absolute to moderate malnutrition, with the most vulnerable being children, women, and elderly among the lowest income group. The Government of Pakistan has been taking a series of policy initiatives and strategic measures to combat food insecurity issues. (...) These range from increasing production to food imports, implementation of poverty reduction strategies, nutritional improvement programs, as well as provision of social safety nets. The article aims to instill some fresh thinking into the debate regarding the challenges of food security. It underscores the limitations of hitherto policy response, and suggests crucial measures to improve the present grim scenario. Policy makers, planners, practitioners, and academicians in countries with comparable socio-political and economic setup can view this discussion as a case study and may apply the findings in their domain accordingly. (shrink)
Response to wrongdoing is modeled as a decision process in an organizational context. The model is grounded in theory of risk, ambiguity, and informational influences on decision making. Time pressure, inadequate information and coworker influences are addressed. Along the way, a handful of propositions are provided which emphasize influences on the actual choice between response options.
The increasing debate on corporate ethics raises the question of whether consumers are willing to reward and punish corporate behaviour based on its ethicality. In this context, this article investigates the direct effect on consumers' willingness to pay. Price response to product-related ethical information is explored in an experiment dealing with social issues in sportswear and environmental issues in consumer electronics. It is shown that in both areas, consumers demonstrate an increased willingness to pay for ethically produced goods. However, (...) the response is subject to a negativity bias. In contrast to prior research that used abstract stimulus measures, a ratio for quantifying this bias is suggested based on consumers' willingness to pay and their price expectations. This measure allows us to analyse a consumer's individual bias. (shrink)
Unveiling the Past—Preparing the Conditions for Human Beings to Live in the Midst of One Another Again? A Response From Living in Northern Ireland Content Type Journal Article Category Symposium Pages 333-335 DOI 10.1007/s11673-011-9334-y Authors Derick Wilson, University of Ulster, School of Education, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52 1SA UK Journal Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Online ISSN 1872-4353 Print ISSN 1176-7529 Journal Volume Volume 8 Journal Issue Volume 8, Number 4.
This essay considers the potential role of bioethics in disaster response planning and preparedness. Bioethicists can make substantial contributions, by ensuring that decision-making and distribution of resources during crises is carried out in a fair and just manner, as well as by examining the assumptions upon which disaster planning are based. Bioethicists should also be aware of potential pitfalls of overly-hasty engagement with this new field.
The goal of this study is to characterize observers’ abilities to detect gradual changes and to explore putative dissociations between conscious experience of change and behavioral adaptation to a changing stimulus. We developed a new experimental paradigm in which, on each trial, participants were shown a dot pattern on the screen. Next, the pattern disappeared and participants had to reproduce it. In some conditions, the target pattern was incrementally rotated over successive trials and participants were either informed or not of (...) this change. We analyzed both awareness of the changes and the dynamics of behavioral adaptation, in a way that makes it possible to assess both variability and accuracy as they change over time. Results indicate a dissociation between change awareness and behavioral adaptation to the changes, and support the notion that unconscious representations of visual stimuli are more precise and detailed than previously suggested. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of change detection. Crown Copyright Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)
This article presents a response to Néron and Norman’s contention that the language of citizenship is helpful in thinking about the political dimensions of corporate responsibilities. We argue that Néron and Norman’s main conclusions are valid but offer an extension of their analysis to incorporate extant streams of literature dealing with the political role of the corporation. We also propose that the perspective on citizenship adopted by Néron and Norman is rather narrow, andtherefore provide some alternative ways in which (...) corporations and citizenship might be brought together. We conclude by suggesting that, rather than simply applying the concept of citizenship to corporations, we now need to go further in exploring how corporations might play an active role in reconfiguring the whole notion of citizenship itself. (shrink)
The irreversibility effect implies that a decision maker who neglects the prospect of receiving more complete information at later stages of a sequential decision problem will in certain cases too easily take an irreversible decision, as he ignores the existence of a positive option value in favour of reversible decisions. This option value represents the decision maker's flexibility to adapt subsequent decisions to the obtained information. In this paper we show that the economic models dealing with irreversibility as used in (...) environmental and capital investment decision making can be extended to emergency response decisions that produce important irreversible effects. In particular, we concentrate on the decision whether or not to evacuate an industrial area threatened by a possible nuclear accident. We show in a simple two-period evacuation decision model that non-optimal conclusions may be drawn when evacuation is regarded as a `now or never decision'. The robustness of these results is verified by means of a sensitivity analysis of the various model parameters. The importance of `options thinking' in this decision context is illustrated in an example. (shrink)
Many people argue that uncertain science -- or controversial policies based on science -- can be clarified primarily by greater attention to the social and ethical values influencing the science and the policy and by greater attention to the vested, economic interests involved. This paper argues that while such clarification is necessary, it is neither a sufficient condition, nor even the primary means, by which to achieve better science and better policy. Using a case study involving the current, highly politicized (...) controversy over the shape of dose-response curves for biological effects of ionizing radiation in both the protective action levels (PALS) and the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) environmental proposals, the paper argues that the conflict could be resolved largely through five specific methodological improvements in the areas of metascience and philosophy of science. (shrink)
The time is ripe for innovation in global health governance if we are to achieve global health and development objectives in the face of formidable challenges. Integration of global health concerns into the law and governance of other, related disciplines should be given high priority. This article explores opportunities for health policymaking in the global response to climate change. Climate change and environmental degradation will affect weather disasters, food and water security, infectious disease patterns, and air pollution. Although scientific (...) research has pointed to the interdependence of the global environment and human health, policymakers have been slow to integrate their approaches to environmental and health concerns. A robust response to climate change will require improved integration on two fronts: health concerns must be given higher priority in the response to climate change and threats associated with climate change and environmental degradation must be more adequately addressed by global health law and governance. The mitigation/adaptation response paradigm developing within and beyond the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provides a useful framework for thinking about global health law and governance with respect to climate change, environmental degradation, and possibly other upstream determinants of health as well. (shrink)
Professor Franklin is correct to say that there are significant areas of agreement between his account of formal science (Franklin, 1994) and my critique of his account. We both agree that the domain-independence exhibited by the formal sciences is ontologically and epistemically interesting, and that the concept of ‘structure’ must be central in any analysis of domain-independence. We also agree that knowledge of the structural, relational properties of physical systems should count as empirical knowledge, and that it makes sense to (...) talk about an empirical ‘science’ of structure. Where we disagree is over the frequency of occasions where ‘practical certainty’ is actually attained: Franklin argues that practical certainty is not uncommon in the formal sciences, while I argue that there are barriers to practical certainty that Franklin fails to appreciate. In Franklin’s response, he briefly presents and offers criticisms of my two main arguments against his central thesis. Franklin asserts that the flaw in my first argument is that it does not appreciate that modern mathematical models exhibit structural stability, and thus that many of their predictions are robust under small variations in input or parameter values (and hence, insensitive to the inevitable gaps between estimates and actual values). Nevertheless, what I had in mind in using the term ‘realistic modelling situations’ were models of fairly complex natural systems, such as the dripping faucet, spruce budworm and ecosystem ecology examples. My objection is not that mathematical models of such systems cannot legitimately and accurately describe structural properties that are genuinely predicable of real-world systems, but simply that for.. (shrink)
Abstract Traditional moral philosophy, developmental psychology and moral education have generally been concerned with relationships between human beings. However, moral philosophy has gradually expanded to include plants, animals and ecosystems as legitimate moral objects, and aesthetics has rediscovered nature as an object of consideration. Thus it seems appropriate to begin to include this sphere in moral education and corresponding research as well. In this paper we wish to report on an investigation we have begun using children's philosophy as a hermeneutic (...) tool to assess the morally relevant values and attitudes that children and adolescents hold with respect to nature and the patterns of reasoning with which they are expressed. In the first part of our presentation we will outline current positions in environmental ethics and aesthetics which provide a theoretical framework for such an investigation and the problems they present. Subsequently the difficulties involved with applying contemporary theories of moral development to the problem at hand will be discussed. Finally, we will describe the project we have begun and summarise preliminary results derived from different age groups. (shrink)
(2013). Matching bias in syllogistic reasoning: Evidence for a dual-process account from response times and confidence ratings. Thinking & Reasoning: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 54-77. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2012.735622.
To survive and be successful in today's setting of globalisation and complexity, companies are obliged to think in wider strategic terms, developing active and enterprising strategies that include social, political and ecological elements, besides the economic ones. The analysis of the relationship between companies and society is especially interesting when these companies operate in international markets. Countries demand that large corporations contribute to local, regional and national development in such a way that their resources are exchanged for a significant increase (...) in their citizens' quality of life. Faced with that fact, the aim of this work is to establish what actions the subsidiaries will take in order to offer a response to the needs of their stakeholders in the host countries. Secondly, we attempt to identify the factors explaining the different levels of social response of the subsidiaries established in a particular country by different parent companies. The empirical study was carried out on a sample of Spanish subsidiaries in the two manufacturing industries with most foreign investment (the chemical and automobile industries) and the results obtained both confirmed the validity of the tool used to measure social response and permitted us to determine which factors influence the institutionalisation of social responsiveness. (shrink)
Level of processing and generation effects were replicated in separate experiments in which recognition memory was tested using either short (500 ms) or long (1500 ms) response deadlines. These effects were similar at each deadline. Moreover, at each deadline these effects were associated with subsequent reports of remembering, not of knowing. And reports of both knowing and remembering increased following the longer deadline. These results imply that knowing does not index an automatic familiarity process, as conceived in some dual-process (...) models of recognition, and that both remembering and knowing increase with the slower, more controlled processing permitted by the longer response time. (shrink)
Many people argue that uncertain science—or controversial policies based on science—can be clarified primarily by greater attention to social/political values influencing the science and by greater attention to the vested interests involved. This paper argues that while such clarification is necessary, it is not a sufficient condition for achieving better science and policy; indeed its importance may be overemphasized. Using a case study involving the current, highly politicized controversy over the shape of dose‐response curves for biological effects of ionizing (...) radiation, the paper argues that the conflict could be significantly resolved through specific methodological improvements in the areas of metascience and philosophy of science. These improvements focus on taking account, respectively, of scale, data trimming, aggregation, measurability, and simplicity. (shrink)
After identifying points of agreement between Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar on topics raised by Dr. Sain’s essay, this response raises questions about the deeper foundations of the substantial differences between them. It suggests that the appeal to contrast in their starting-points (Goethe versus Kant) as an explanation is not adequate and suggests lines of further inquiry which might be pursued further.
The current conflict between the recording industry and a portion of its customers who are involved in illicit copying of music files arose from innovations involving the compression and electronic distribution of files over the internet. This paper briefly describes some of the challenges faced by the recording industry, and examines some of the ethical issues that arise in various industry and consumer responses to the opportunities and threats presented by these innovations. The paper concludes by highlighting the risks associated (...) with responses that threaten further innovation, ultimately reducing the chances of finding solutions that hold appeal for all parties. (shrink)
: I briefly reprise a few themes of my bookMoral Understandingsin order to address some questions about responsibility and justification. I argue for a thoroughly situated and naturalized view of moral justification that warns us not to take moral universalism too easily at face value. I also argue for the significance of reports of experience, among other kinds of empirical evidence, in testing the habitability of moral forms of life.
In this analysis of Marcia Baronâs account of excuses, I seek to do twothings. I try to draw out the nature of the distinction between forgivingand excusing. I also defend the distinction between excuses (like duress),and denials of responsibility (like insanity).
Eric Scerri has proposed an account of how reduction might be understood in chemistry. He claims to build on a general aspect of Popper's views which survives his otherwise heavy criticism, namely adherence to actual scientific practice. This is contrasted with Nagel's conception, which Scerri takes to be the philosopher's standard notion. I argue that his proposal, interesting though it is, is not so foreign to ideas in the tradition within which Nagel wrote as Scerri would have us believe. Moreover, (...) actual scientific practice can be commandeered in support of a holistic conception which Popper contrasted with what he saw as the admirable strivings towards reduction in science. (shrink)
Steven Tudor defends the mitigation of criminal sentences in cases in which offenders are genuinely remorseful for their crimes. More than this, he takes the principle that such remorse-based sentence reductions are appropriate to be a âwell-settled legal principleââso well settled, in fact, that âit is among those deep-seated commitments which can serve to test general theories as much as they are tested by themâ. However, his account of why remorse should reduce punishment is strongly philosophical in character. He sets (...) to one side the many practical difficulties in implementing such reductions in the real world of criminal justice institutions so that he can focus on the question of whether a plausible account of sentencing can show that remorse should mitigate punishment. I contend that Tudorâs defense of such reductions is unpersuasive in certain respects. Yet even if it can be made more persuasive, I argue that the conditions that would have to be satisfied for remorse-based sentence reductions to be justifiably implemented are so many and various that they would likely exceed our abilities to responsibly grant them in real world legal contexts. I therefore claim that Tudor has failed to provide a defense of the âremorse principleâ that serves to explain or justify existing legal practices. (shrink)
The Internet and Internet applications such as cloud computing continue to grow at an extraordinary rate, enabled by the Internet's open architecture and the vibrant lightly regulated Internet service provider (ISP) market. Proposals to hold ISPs responsible for content and software shared by their customers would dramatically constrain the openness and innovation that has been the hallmark of the Internet to date. Rather than taking the kind of approach favored by Raphael Cohen-Almagor, government should enlist the assistance of other intermediaries (...) such as credit card companies in targeted actions against illegal activities online. In addition, they should foster improved online authentication, which could support “zones of trust” on the Internet. (shrink)
Iain Thomson's critique is persuasive on several points but not on the major issue, the relation of the ontological to the ontic in Heidegger's philosophy of technology. This reply attempts to show that these two dimensions of Heidegger's theory are closely related, at least in the technological domain, and not separate, as Thomson affirms. It is argued that Heidegger's evaluations of particular technologies, the flaws of which Thomson concedes, proceed from a flawed ontological conception.
In a recent article, Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve present an argument against the so-called ‘Priority View’ of distribution.1 According to that view, as stated by Derek Parfit, ‘benefiting people matters more the worse off these people are’, by virtue of the fact that a person’s utility has ‘diminishing marginal moral importance’ the better off she is.2 Otsuka and Voorhoeve claim that, because this view fails to reflect a significant difference between the intrapersonal and the interpersonal, it should be rejected. (...) Their initial counter-example (pp. 171–4) asks us to imagine a young adult who is told that she is going to develop a mobility-affecting condition and has a 50 per cent chance of developing each of the following. (shrink)
In their correspondence in 1902 and 1903, after discussing the Russell paradox, Russell and Frege discussed the paradox of propositions considered informally in Appendix B of Russell’s Principles of Mathematics. It seems that the proposition, p, stating the logical product of the class w, namely, the class of all propositions stating the logical product of a class they are not in, is in w if and only if it is not. Frege believed that this paradox was avoided within his philosophy (...) due to his distinction between sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung). However, I show that while the paradox as Russell formulates it is ill-formed with Frege’s extant logical system, if Frege’s system is expanded to contain the commitments of his philosophy of language, an analogue of this paradox is formulable. This and other concerns in Fregean intensional logic are discussed, and it is discovered that Frege’s logical system, even without its naive class theory embodied in its infamous Basic Law V, leads to inconsistencies when the theory of sense and reference is axiomatized therein. (shrink)
This paper is designed to help people rationally engage moral issues regarding the treatment of animals, specifically uses of animals in medical and psychological experimentation, basic research, drug development, education and training, consumer product testing and other areas.
James Shelley argues that the perception of beauty, as Hutcheson characterizes it, in the first of the two treatises that comprise the Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, that is, the Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design, is not what I called in The Seventh Sense, ‘non-epistemic’ perception but, rather, ‘epistemic’ perception through and through. Having studied Shelley's arguments with care, and consulted the relevant primary sources yet again, I am still convinced that (...) the best reading of Hutcheson's second Inquiry, in the first edition of 1725, has Hutcheson espousing a non-epistemic account of our perception of what he calls ‘absolute beauty’. And so I argue in the present paper. (shrink)
In the Western aesthetic canon, the still life enjoys a certain prestige; its place in the museum and on the pages of the art history text is secure. Art aficionados who appreciate the character of Cezanne's apples help to ensure the lofty standing of the still life, as do students who admire the dewdrops still glistening on flowers picked and painted in the nineteenth century. For some students, however, it is difficult to understand such veneration. Despite the coaxing of dedicated (...) art or museum educators, these students find apples nestled among drapery folds or translucent petals in a spring bouquet to be "boring." No matter how compelling the apples, how exquisitely rendered the blossoms, the still life is .. (shrink)
Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’ plainly has an anti-Cartesian conclusion: ‘inner experience in general is only possible through outer experience in general’ (B278). Due to wide-spread preoccupation with Cartesian skepticism, and to the anti-naturalism of early analytic philosophy, most of Kant’s recent commentators have sought to find a purely conceptual, ‘analytic’ argument in Kant’s Refutation of Idealism – and then have dismissed Kant when no such plausible argument can be reconstructed from his text. Kant’s argument supposedly cannot eliminate all relevant alternatives, (...) and so cannot justify its strong modal claims. Kant based his arguments on an inventory of our basic cognitive capacities to employ our forms of intuition and our forms of judgment. Kant provides a variety of considerations and arguments to determine what our cognitive capacities are. This involves ‘transcendental reflection’, which Kant held is absolutely crucial for judging matters a priori (A263/B319). I argue that there is a level of philosophical reflection on our own cognitive capabilities and their preconditions that is significantly richer than has been noticed by recent commentators, and that is a precondition of Kant’s transcendental reflection proper. I explicate certain thought experiments Kant proposes in order for us to recognize some our basic, characteristic cognitive capabilities, and the limits and requirements they entail for the nature and objects of human knowledge. These thought experiments involve a kind of reflection on who we as cognizant subjects are, on what our basic cognitive capabilities are. Engaging in this kind of reflection reveals that Kant’s transcendental arguments are significantly stronger and more persuasive than has been recognized in recent commentary. (shrink)
According to an influential view, empathy has, and should have, a role in ethics, but it is by no means clear what is meant by 'empathy', and why exactly it is supposed to be morally good. Recently, Peter Goldie has challenged that view. He shows how problematic empathy is, and argues that taking an external perspective is morally superior: we should focus on the other, rather than ourselves. But this argument is misguided in several ways. If we consider conversation, there (...) is no need to see an opposition between a focus on the other and on ourselves. I propose to shift the perspective of the discussion towards the needs of those who are supposed to benefit from empathy, and to study how people communicate their imaginative processes towards their receivers. I end with an exploration of theoretical resources for an account of mutual perspective-shifting. (shrink)
Abstract. I respond to the criticisms of David Wisdo of my position on the relationship between science and religion. I argue that although he gives a full and fair account of my position, he fails to grasp fully my use of the metaphorical basis of modern science in my argument that, because of its mechanistic commitment, there are some questions that science not only does not answer but that science does not even attempt to answer. Hence, my position stands and (...) plays a crucial role in our understanding of the science–religion relationship. (shrink)
